Where I’m Calling From: A Conversation on Short Stories

Proof of registration, via a QR code on your phone or on paper, will be required to enter Reid Hall. Entry will be refused to those who are not registered.

Please note that access will not be permitted 15 minutes after the start of the event.

This event will be held in English.

Join Guadalupe Nettel, Ayşegül Savaş, and Maylis de Kerangal for a conversation on the art of the short story. The three writers will talk about their respective collections, published recently in English, and share their thoughts on the genre, its influence on their work, and the authors who have shaped their craft.

Guadalupe Nettel, Fellow at the Institute for Ideas and Imagination, is a Mexican writer, author of award-winning novels and collections of short stories translated into more than twenty languages. In 2008 she received a PhD in Literature from the EHESS in Paris. Her work has been adapted into theater and film. This year she will publish The Accidentals, a collection of short stories released simultaneously in UK (Fitzcarraldo) and in the USA (Bloomsbury). At the Institute, Nettel is working on a novel, The Book of Anger.

Ayşegül Savaş is the author of the novels Walking on the Ceiling, White on White, and most recently The Anthropologists which was longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award. It was named one of TIME magazine’s top 10 books of 2024, New York Magazine’s #1 book of the year, and one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of the year, among others. Savaş has also written the nonfiction work The Wilderness, and the short story collection Long Distance which will be published this year.

Maylis de Kerangal est l’auteure d’une quinzaine de romans et nouvelles, publiés aux Éditions Verticales/Gallimard. Parmi eux Corniche Kennedy (2008), Naissance d’un pont (2010), (Prix Médicis, Prix Franz Hessel, et Premio Von Rezzori 2014) ou Réparer les vivants (2014), roman d’une transplantation cardiaque (douze prix littéraires dont le Prix des Étudiants France-Culture Télérama et le Grand Prix RTL-Lire, traduit dans 40 langues, adapté au cinéma et au théâtre, lauréat du Wellcome Book Prize et du Premio Letterario Merck).  À ce stade de la nuit, nocturne sur les naufrages en Méditerranée (2014, Éditions Guérin) et reçoit le Prix Boccace en 2016. En 2018, parait Un monde à portée de main, roman d’initiation à la peinture qui interroge la création. Ses livres suivent également une orientation plus documentaire, comme en témoignent Un chemin de table (Seuil, 2016) ou Kiruna (La Contre-Allée, 2019).  

Son travail est marqué par l’empreinte des lieux, la question du paysage, la présence des fantômes, il s’intéresse aux devenirs de la jeunesse, aux mondes du travail et à la voix humaine comme en témoigne Canoës (2021).   Jour de ressac, est publié en août 2024. 

This event will take place in Reid Hall’s Grande Salle Ginsberg-LeClerc, built in 1912 and extensively renovated in 2023 thanks to the generous support of Judith Ginsberg and Paul LeClerc.