Writers in Residence: Naomi Fontaine and Gisèle Pineau
About the Event
The Winthrop-King Institute will be sponsoring a Writers in Residence week (March 25-29, 2024) with Naomi Fontaine and Gisèle Pineau, inspired by Édouard Glissant's thought, to encourage collaboration and connections between the works and communities these authors claim.
As part of this week, the Winthrop-King Institute has also organized a New Regions Symposium on from March 28 to 29, 2024. In accordance with the aims of the New Regions initiative, we have papers and panels that examine the work of Naomi Fontaine and Gisèle Pineau, especially the potential resonances between the two authors, and between communities, cultures, and histories in Quebec, Guadeloupe and the broader Caribbean.
The Winthrop-King Writers in Residence brings together these two women writers who give voice to communities and people who have historically been underrepresented. As part of the New Regions initiative, our aim is to create a space where two writers from two different communities can come together to generate new understandings and new relations. The authors will be in residence at Florida State University from March 24 to 31, 2024. During that time, the communities of Florida State University and Tallahassee will have the opportunity to meet and engage with them through a writing workshop, public readings and the symposium.
Naomi Fontaine was born in Uashat, an Innu community surrounded by the Sept-Îles Bay. She is a French teacher and writer in her home community. Her first novel, Kuessipan (Mémoire d’encrier, 2011), won the Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie and was adapted into a feature-length film. In her second novel, Manikanetish (Mémoire d’encrier, 2017), Fontaine writes about education, return, and the effects of history on her students and community. She was named one of the Women of the Year by Elle Québec in 2011. Fontaine’s work is profoundly anticolonial and deeply engaged with the effects of history on the Innu community.
Gisèle Pineau has written about exile, intolerance, violence, poverty, solitude, and love over the course of her prolific writing career. She has won eleven literary prizes, most recently the Prix du roman historique (2021) for her novel from the same year, Ady, soleil noir. The work reconstructs the life of Adrienne Fidelin, a Guadeloupean woman who became the muse and model for the American surrealist Man Ray. In addition to being a writer, Gisèle Pineau spent close to 20 years as a psychiatric nurse. She has recently returned to Guadeloupe and lives on the island of Marie-Galante.