Making Literature Travel

Whether we tame nature by creating gardens, exploit it by growing food and breeding stock, or damage it with the expansion of cities, industries and transport, we have reached a critical point when climate change calls for a radical rethinking of human interaction with nature. Writing the Climate, the Climate of Writing is an on-going collaboration between Literature Across Frontiers and  Metropolis Bleu Festival in Montreal that brings together Quebecois and Welsh authors in exchange visits to discuss our relationship with nature and our place in the natural and cultural ecosystems.

This year, Wales will be represented at the Metropolis Bleu Festival by authors Sian Melangell Dafydd and Llyr Gwyn Lewis alongside LAF director Alexandra Büchler and Hay Festival International Director Cristina Fuentes la Roche.  Quebec authors Juliana Leveillé-Trudel and Louis Hamelin will visit Wales in June and appear in events at Senedd-dy Owain Glyndŵr in Machynlleth and at the Hay Festival. See Events for more details.

Last year the novelist Christian Guay-Poliquin and author and scriptwriter Fflur Dafydd paid each other visits during April and June, having written commissioned texts on the subject of our relationship with nature. After Fflur’ visit to the Metropolis Bleu festival, Christian visited Wales in June and spend a week in Aberystwyth, Carmarthen and Cardiff, meeting audiences and local writers. In Aberystwyth he was in conversation with the Welsh-language novelist Siân Melangell Dafydd about writing in French in North America, about how of the language movement in Quebec has shaped culture in the province and the vibrant city of Montreal and about the ‘climate’ in which minoritised literatures can thrive.

From Aberystwyth he travelled to Carmarthen where he appeared with his counterpart Fflur Dafydd in a double bill: a brunch event at the media and creativity hub Canolfan S4C Yr Egin and in the National Botanic Garden of Wales, both moderated by Elin Haf Gruffydd Jones. He then spent a day in Cardiff concluding his short tour of Wales before travelling back to Montreal.

See Events for details and view recordings of the three events here.

The 2022 edition of Writing the Climate, the Climate of Writing was produced by Literature Across Frontiers in partnership with Metropolis Bleu Festival, Canolfan S4C Yr Egin and the National Botanic Garden of Wales, and was supported by the Welsh Government and the Government of Quebec.