{"id":176155,"date":"2026-11-10T08:00:28","date_gmt":"2026-11-10T13:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=176155"},"modified":"2026-11-09T21:46:28","modified_gmt":"2026-11-10T02:46:28","slug":"festival-america-literary-festival-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/11\/10\/festival-america-literary-festival-france\/","title":{"rendered":"At Festival America, France&#8217;s America-Themed Literary Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_176173\" style=\"width: 1034px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-176173\" class=\"wp-image-176173 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/dsc8398-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"Ta Nehisi Coates panel at the Festival America\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/dsc8398-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/dsc8398-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/dsc8398-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/dsc8398-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/dsc8398.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-176173\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ta-Nehisi Coates panel. \u00a9 Siriot de la Petra.<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This summer, Festival America, a four-day event that is not in America, released its trailer\u2014a supercut of iconic imagery spanning the history of the United States. Native American men riding horses. A portrait of George Washington. The site of the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre. Men digging a mass grave. Suffragists parading. Troops storming Normandy. A mushroom cloud. A rocket launch. And text:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Litt\u00e9rature<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Expositions<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">60 autrices et auteurs am\u00e9ricains<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Next came the headshots of John Grisham and Joyce Carol Oates, Laura Kasischke and Ta-Nehisi Coates, superimposed over scenes from the March on Washington. Next, a ticker tape of sixty names, one of them my husband\u2019s, scrolled across footage of men marching into war. The mostly black-and-white montage switched into color as Ronald Reagan signed a bill and a plane smashed into the Twin Towers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"AMERICA 2026 : bande-annonce\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rtQiLlcKQ48?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Festival America, which is held every two years, typically invites authors from across the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean whose works have recently been translated into French for a series of panels and workshops in Vincennes, a town just outside Paris. But the 2026 lineup was 100 percent from the U.S.A. in honor of the country\u2019s semiquincentennial. Among those invited were Alison Bechdel, Tommy Orange, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Karen Russell, Patrick Radden Keefe, and many more of our nation\u2019s best-known working writers, plus my husband, Jake, who was suffering from an acute case of impostor syndrome.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To say Jake was surprised to be included in this lineup is an understatement. His debut novel, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Slime Line<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, was published so quietly by a university press that when he signed with a larger imprint in New York for his next book, his editor still referred to him as a \u201cdebut author.\u201d Nevertheless, a major French publisher acquired <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Slime Line<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2014or as it\u2019s known in French,<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Alaska Parano<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2014and two years after its U.S. release, we flew from Pennsylvania to Paris<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">to find that he\u2019d amassed a not-insubstantial Francophone following.<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">His book was front and center on the <small>NEW AND NOTABLE<\/small> table at the bookstore near our hotel. It was there, too, at a bookstore on the next block. And guess who was a <small>STAFF PICK <\/small>at Shakespeare and Company.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jake was beside himself with a confused sort of glee. The fawning messages he\u2019d received from French-language accounts on Instagram were beginning to make sense. One post praised his novel\u2014which is based on his experience working in the commercial-fishing industry\u2014for being a beautiful treatise on the \u201csolidarity of magnificent losers.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Around this time his French publicist reached out. She wanted to know if he would speak to a journalist at a major French magazine for a profile as the \u201cnew voice of America.\u201d Evidence was mounting that Jake\u2019s work was touching a very specific French sensibility. In Vincennes, I made it my mission to find out what.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">*<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That\u2019s not exactly true. That\u2019s just something journalists say to end their opener with a little narrative thrust. Getting to the bottom of French literary sensibilities was more of a secondary reason for me, trailing wine and cheese. On the festival\u2019s first full day, authors and their plus-ones were invited to a \u201ccocktail lunch\u201d at the Ch\u00e2teau de Vincennes, the seat of French kings from the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries. There, we chewed on skewered radish slices, thin breads topped with charcuterie, and pert meringues in the shadow of the tallest donjon in Europe.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_176178\" style=\"width: 1034px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-176178\" class=\"size-large wp-image-176178\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/1280px-chateau-vincennes-vu-depuis-esplanade-saint-louis-vincennes-fr94-2021-01-22-3-1024x206.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"206\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/1280px-chateau-vincennes-vu-depuis-esplanade-saint-louis-vincennes-fr94-2021-01-22-3-1024x206.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/1280px-chateau-vincennes-vu-depuis-esplanade-saint-louis-vincennes-fr94-2021-01-22-3-300x60.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/1280px-chateau-vincennes-vu-depuis-esplanade-saint-louis-vincennes-fr94-2021-01-22-3-768x154.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/1280px-chateau-vincennes-vu-depuis-esplanade-saint-louis-vincennes-fr94-2021-01-22-3.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-176178\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ch\u00e2teau de Vincennes<\/span>, <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0\">CC BY-SA 4.0<\/a>, via <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Ch%C3%A2teau_Vincennes_vu_depuis_Esplanade_Saint_Louis_-_Vincennes_(FR94)_-_2021-01-22_-_3.jpg\">Wikimedia Commons<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Over drinks, I asked the festival\u2019s head interpreter if there was any historical torture equipment around. She told me that the most terrible death at the ch\u00e2teau had less to do with torture than with disease. During the Hundred Years\u2019 War, King Henry V of England had retreated there shortly after the Siege of Meaux. He\u2019d just conquered Normandy and was near to becoming king of France. But the man barely had time to settle into his new digs before he got dysentery and died. That was in 1422.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Observing the United States\u2019s birthday in Europe is a reminder that we have a minuscule history\u2014a cultural handicap that our literature must overcome. \u201cCompared to Europe,\u201d the festival\u2019s founder, Francis Geffard, told me, \u201cit\u2019s very recent.\u201d Nevertheless, two hundred fifty is a pleasingly round number, and he saw \u201ca good occasion\u201d to make this year\u2019s festival about the U.S. It also allowed him to pursue what might seem like a lofty goal: to assemble enough American authors, spanning generations, geographies, and identities,\u00a0to see once and for all \u201cwhat American fiction has to say to readers outside of America.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This seems like an impossible task until you remember the one thing that unites American writers, old and young, established and emerging: they will nearly always accept a free trip to Paris. As Francis told me, \u201cIt is very unusual for a writer to turn down the invitation.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">*<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After cocktail lunch, Francis was moderating \u201cThe French Taste for American Literature,\u201d a roundtable with three Francophone experts on American letters, at the H\u00f4tel de Ville, Vincennes\u2019s nineteenth-century town hall. To enter the building, I had first to walk along a red carpet, flanked by a photography exhibition featuring, among others, an image of terrified migrants paddling across the Rio Grande. Inside, more than two hundred people had climbed the grand staircase to the marriage hall, where frescoed aristocrats looked down from the walls.\u00a0The previous festival had drawn sixty thousand people\u2014the press team didn\u2019t seem to think this year\u2019s turnout would be any less. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-176184 \" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/194-dsc5884-683x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"337\" height=\"505\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/194-dsc5884-683x1024.jpg 683w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/194-dsc5884-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/194-dsc5884-768x1152.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/194-dsc5884-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/194-dsc5884-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/194-dsc5884-scaled.jpg 1707w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This was a French-language panel, and Francis\u2019s questions hinted at certain shared assumptions among French readers. \u201cWe agree that American writers aren\u2019t quite the same as, say, French writers,\u201d began one. \u201cFrom France, we often tend to imagine the United States as a country without culture,\u201d began another.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One of the panelists was S\u00e9bastien Bonifay, a Corsican writer and bookseller who traveled to the U.S. more than twenty times to visit his favorite American authors at their homes, often for days at a time. His recent book, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(Not) Born in the USA,<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> recounts meetings with James Ellroy, Chris Offutt, Donald Ray Pollock, Stuart Dybek, James McBride, and more. These are known names, if not exactly those an American would pick. \u201cThe literature that nourishes me,\u201d he said, \u201cis an American literature that Americans don\u2019t like.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He called it \u201ca literature of the margins,\u201d and panelists riffed on<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">what those rough edges were. One placed marginal American literature in a lineage of countercultures that rail against <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">l\u2019establishment<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (anglicism, pejorative)\u2014rock and roll, psychedelia, punk. Another said that the United States has two literatures: one of \u201cthe coasts\u201d and one of \u201cthe other,\u201d rarely published but often excellent. This thrilling literature of the margins was often published by universities, which, the panelist said, \u201chave wonderful presses.\u201d It didn\u2019t matter that this type of book didn\u2019t always achieve mainstream acclaim; the panelists seemed to trust their own taste.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The more the panelists riffed, the more they came to describe my husband. A panelist brought up the idea of \u201can American-style r\u00e9sum\u00e9\u201d\u2014belonging, it seemed, to someone who fits writing in between blue-collar gigs. The panelists called this type of writer \u201cartisanal,\u201d someone \u201cwhose real-life experience shows through in their work.\u201d This writer \u201chad lived.\u201d And this writer had done so in places the French reader could hardly imagine, like Ohio.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s in this misunderstood land that S\u00e9bastien begins his book: in a Wendy\u2019s parking lot, sweating with anxiety about his impending visit to Donald Ray Pollock\u2019s house. After the panel, I found S\u00e9bastien sitting behind a stack of copies in the book-signing tent, and he told me he fell in love with American literature at fourteen, reading Stephen King. It wasn\u2019t the horror that gripped him; it was the way King described small American towns. Before a single plot twist even dropped, S\u00e9bastien was entranced by Derry, King\u2019s fictional Maine hamlet. This pleased me, as someone from an American town.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThe writers who have a lot of success in France,\u201d he said, often aren\u2019t as successful at home, and sometimes \u201care not even published in America.\u201d I asked him why French people liked American literature that doesn\u2019t get much attention in the U.S. He had a theory about this. \u201cFrench people, they\u2019ve got a problem with America,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are fascinated by America. But we truly, deeply think we should be, as France, as a country, where America is.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For one, France has so much more history, whereas the history of the United States is terribly short.\u00a0That\u2019s why many of the American books that become popular in France show America\u2019s darker, shittier, seedier side. He pointed to Benjamin Whitmer, an American writer whose noirs have a much larger audience in France. S\u00e9bastien visited Whitmer in Colorado as part of his series of pilgrimages to the United States.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThis guy has got thirteen guns,\u201d S\u00e9bastien told me. French people think owning a gun means you\u2019re a redneck, he said. But when S\u00e9bastien visited him in Colorado, Whitmer asked him about Maurice Blanchot. \u201cMaurice Blanchot!\u201d The fact that someone could own thirteen guns and be a fan of the French literary theorist Maurice Blanchot was significant enough to warrant repetition. \u201cBenjamin Whitmer <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">knows <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Maurice Blanchot<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">,\u201d he said. \u201cHe <em>reads<\/em> Maurice Blanchot, and he\u2019s got thirteen guns.\u201d He moved his fist emphatically, then clarified. \u201cOne of them is for the grizzlies. One of them is for the coyotes.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To S\u00e9bastien, Whitmer was one kind of writer, to be juxtaposed against another. \u201cIt\u2019s just my opinion, but these writers are a lot better than the other ones,\u201d he said. \u201cReally, I don\u2019t care about Jeffrey Eugenides! Really, I don\u2019t care.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">*<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_176172\" style=\"width: 1034px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-176172\" class=\"size-large wp-image-176172\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/dsc7393-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/dsc7393-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/dsc7393-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/dsc7393-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/dsc7393-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/dsc7393.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-176172\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u00a9 Siriot de la Petra.<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Elsewhere in the bookselling tent, Jake, the proud author of a title published by West Virginia University Press, was already flying through book sales. He had just spoken to a class of teens who had mobbed him like a rock star. \u00a0When I told him about S\u00e9bastien, he said, \u201cThat guy rules. I think he wants us to come to Corsica.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A long queue for Joyce Maynard snaked around the booths. I introduced myself to two women thumbing through books, asking them what they liked about American literature. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThe stories, the journey, the wide-open spaces, and all that,\u201d said the younger one, who quickly turned her own questions on me. They had come here to learn about America, and here I was, a real, live American. At their prodding, I told them about my husband\u2019s work.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cAh, that wouldn\u2019t exist here, someone who writes about being a fisherman,\u201d the woman said. \u201cIn France, it\u2019s more <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">l\u2019establishment<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I asked what she meant by <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">l\u2019establishment<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cProfessionals,\u201d her companion clarified. \u201cI thought your husband would be more like a banker, to be writing about capitalism.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To understand French literature today, the younger went on, I ought to consider the woman in the black hat with the red lipstick. \u201cShe has her own myth,\u201d the older woman said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I\u2019ll confess that at this point, I assumed my French was failing me. The older woman had just made a point about <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">le wokisme<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that I couldn\u2019t quite follow and, out of fear, didn\u2019t ask her to clarify. But I looked up the lady with the black hat and red lipstick later, and it turns out they were speaking about Am\u00e9lie Nothomb, a Belgian-Francophone novelist with a penchant for wearing large hats and appearing on TV. She was named a baroness by King Philippe.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There seemed to be all sorts of fashionable characters floating around the French literary world. The novelist Rob Franklin told me he was at the festival\u2019s opening ceremony when an older woman named Sophie introduced herself to him. She was around ninety and striking, with a pixie cut and an eccentric style. Rob had been told that his French editor was named Sophie. This woman asked if she could take his picture. \u201cI was like, \u2018Okay, sure. My publisher wants to take my photo,\u2019 \u201d he told me. Sophie pulled out a monocle to look at her schedule. Then she did a portrait session with him.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The next day, Rob went to meet Sophie at his publisher\u2019s tent. It was a different woman. He spent the festival wondering who the hell had taken his photo until the last day, when Sophie No. 1 found him again and handed him her business card. It turned out she was France\u2019s most famous photographer of writers, and she\u2019d been doing it for sixty years. \u201cI found out she\u2019s like \u2026 quite famous,\u201d he told me. On her card was a black-and-white portrait she\u2019d taken of Michel Foucault.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">*<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There was one person I wanted to ask about the word<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> l\u2019establishment<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: Fabienne Gondrand, a literary translator who served as Jake\u2019s interpreter throughout the festival. Fabienne had sat beside him on panels, repeating his comments in French. I told Fabienne that a few people had used this word with me to pinpoint the differences between French and American contemporary literature. I wondered if she, too, thought American writers were more anti-<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">l\u2019establishment<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThat\u2019s a little reductive,\u201d she said, seeming surprised. She thought perhaps the people I\u2019d spoken to had used that word because the festival had done a good job curating diverse voices, such as nonwhite and Indigenous writers whose works explicitly challenge American cultural norms. It occurred to me that I had perhaps oversimplified what French readers had intended <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">l\u2019establishment <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">to mean. I\u2019d developed a self-serving theory that the writing world consisted of two camps (coastal literati and scrappy Rust Belt writers with jobs) and that in France, everyone recognized the latter as superior. This is silly, when <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">l\u2019establishment<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is so obviously not writers in major metro areas with big book deals. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">L\u2019establishment am\u00e9ricain<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, really, had been invited and declined. I\u2019m talking about Charles Kushner.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At every edition of Festival America since 2002, Francis told me, the U.S. ambassador to France has given a speech on opening night. Currently, that position is held by Kushner, the real-estate developer and pardoned felon. The U.S. Embassy typically forks over a little cultural funding for the festival\u2014less than the Canadian embassy, but not nothing\u2014and this year they slashed their contribution by 80 percent. Francis took this as a sign of distrust and refused the embassy\u2019s\u00a0money altogether.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Francis told me French that people \u201care feeling a little estranged\u201d from the U.S. at the moment. Shortly after we spoke, Festival America distributed a press release with sharper wording. \u201cIronically,\u201d it said, this funding cut had occurred during \u201cthe very year of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence,\u201d when the festival was hosting the largest delegation of American writers ever \u201cin our country, and likely in Europe or anywhere else.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The festival is right to point out the rarity of this delegation, as these writers would rarely be grouped together. On home turf, they\u2019d more likely be gathered by subject matter, identity, or genre, because in the U.S., \u201cAmerican\u201d is not a uniting descriptor\u2014we\u2019re too close to see clearly. But in Vincennes, we can step back and see the whole picture. What struck me about French readers was their confidence in their own taste, in how it could supersede that of most American readers. But French people have been gazing upon America their whole lives. When I returned from the festival, I found myself in a rare moment of America gazing back.<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kushner\u2019s embassy was advising Americans to \u201cexercise caution.\u201d Since the festival, student protests there have erupted into widespread riots, and I think we could safely say those <em>were<\/em> aimed at<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> l\u2019establishment<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div><em>Noelle Mateer is a journalist in Pennsylvania. Her work appears in<\/em><em>\u00a0the<\/em>\u00a0Guardian<em>, <\/em>The Baffler<em>, <\/em>Wired<em>, and more.\u00a0<\/em><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cHe reads Maurice Blanchot, and he\u2019s got thirteen guns.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2732,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68551],"tags":[7451,142,68983,23021,67827,865,68879,3863,34529],"class_list":["post-176155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dispatch","tag-alison-bechdel","tag-america","tag-charles-kushner","tag-declaration-of-independence","tag-featured","tag-france","tag-patrick-radden-keefe","tag-protests","tag-tommy-orange"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>At Festival America, France&#039;s America-Themed Literary Festival<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The writer Noelle Mateer reports from an America-themed literary festival in France.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/11\/10\/festival-america-literary-festival-france\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"At Festival America, France&#039;s America-Themed Literary Festival by Noelle Mateer\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"November 10, 2026 \u2013 \u201cHe reads Maurice Blanchot, and he\u2019s got thirteen guns.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/11\/10\/festival-america-literary-festival-france\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-11-10T13:00:28+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/dsc8398.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2048\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1365\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Noelle Mateer\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Noelle Mateer\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"13 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/11\/10\/festival-america-literary-festival-france\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/11\/10\/festival-america-literary-festival-france\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Noelle Mateer\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/2d4815331f3c7405edaaee84cea0f38d\"},\"headline\":\"At Festival America, France&#8217;s America-Themed Literary Festival\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-11-10T13:00:28+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/11\/10\/festival-america-literary-festival-france\/\"},\"wordCount\":2753,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/11\/10\/festival-america-literary-festival-france\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/dsc8398-1024x683.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Alison Bechdel\",\"America\",\"Charles Kushner\",\"Declaration of Independence\",\"Featured\",\"France\",\"Patrick Radden Keefe\",\"protests\",\"Tommy Orange\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Dispatch\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/11\/10\/festival-america-literary-festival-france\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/11\/10\/festival-america-literary-festival-france\/\",\"name\":\"At Festival America, France's America-Themed Literary Festival\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/11\/10\/festival-america-literary-festival-france\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/11\/10\/festival-america-literary-festival-france\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/dsc8398-1024x683.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-11-10T13:00:28+00:00\",\"description\":\"The writer Noelle Mateer reports from an America-themed literary festival in France.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/11\/10\/festival-america-literary-festival-france\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/11\/10\/festival-america-literary-festival-france\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/11\/10\/festival-america-literary-festival-france\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/dsc8398.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/dsc8398.jpg\",\"width\":2048,\"height\":1365},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/11\/10\/festival-america-literary-festival-france\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"At Festival America, France&#8217;s America-Themed Literary Festival\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/2d4815331f3c7405edaaee84cea0f38d\",\"name\":\"Noelle Mateer\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/be536764672cc114d28c572c94f812d37653d04e58176fb8da0581ea9b7b8ac2?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/be536764672cc114d28c572c94f812d37653d04e58176fb8da0581ea9b7b8ac2?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Noelle Mateer\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/nmateer\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"At Festival America, France's America-Themed Literary Festival","description":"The writer Noelle Mateer reports from an America-themed literary festival in France.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/11\/10\/festival-america-literary-festival-france\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"At Festival America, France's America-Themed Literary Festival by Noelle Mateer","og_description":"November 10, 2026 \u2013 \u201cHe reads Maurice Blanchot, and he\u2019s got thirteen guns.\u201d","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/11\/10\/festival-america-literary-festival-france\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2026-11-10T13:00:28+00:00","og_image":[{"width":2048,"height":1365,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/dsc8398.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Noelle Mateer","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Noelle Mateer","Est. reading time":"13 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/11\/10\/festival-america-literary-festival-france\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/11\/10\/festival-america-literary-festival-france\/"},"author":{"name":"Noelle Mateer","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/2d4815331f3c7405edaaee84cea0f38d"},"headline":"At Festival America, France&#8217;s America-Themed Literary Festival","datePublished":"2026-11-10T13:00:28+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/11\/10\/festival-america-literary-festival-france\/"},"wordCount":2753,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/11\/10\/festival-america-literary-festival-france\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/dsc8398-1024x683.jpg","keywords":["Alison Bechdel","America","Charles Kushner","Declaration of Independence","Featured","France","Patrick Radden Keefe","protests","Tommy Orange"],"articleSection":["Dispatch"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/11\/10\/festival-america-literary-festival-france\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/11\/10\/festival-america-literary-festival-france\/","name":"At Festival America, France's America-Themed Literary Festival","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/11\/10\/festival-america-literary-festival-france\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/11\/10\/festival-america-literary-festival-france\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/dsc8398-1024x683.jpg","datePublished":"2026-11-10T13:00:28+00:00","description":"The writer Noelle Mateer reports from an America-themed literary festival in France.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/11\/10\/festival-america-literary-festival-france\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/11\/10\/festival-america-literary-festival-france\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/11\/10\/festival-america-literary-festival-france\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/dsc8398.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/dsc8398.jpg","width":2048,"height":1365},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/11\/10\/festival-america-literary-festival-france\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"At Festival America, France&#8217;s America-Themed Literary Festival"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/2d4815331f3c7405edaaee84cea0f38d","name":"Noelle Mateer","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/be536764672cc114d28c572c94f812d37653d04e58176fb8da0581ea9b7b8ac2?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/be536764672cc114d28c572c94f812d37653d04e58176fb8da0581ea9b7b8ac2?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Noelle Mateer"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/nmateer\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2732"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176155"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":176236,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176155\/revisions\/176236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}