Festilitt 2025 program
Friday October 10
9h à 16h
École
Children’s Festilitt
Workshops and theatre for the children in the creche and the primary school
16h30 à 18h
Salle des fêtes
Children’s Festilitt
Children’s tea party and book signing
Saturday October 11
10h à 11h
Salle des fêtes
Authors’ talks and book signings
Gurnaik Johal
This year’s debut novelist traces the lives of six of Satnam’s distant relatives scattered across the globe, but all linked by the holy river Saraswati against the backdrop of growing Hindu nationalism.
10h30 à 11h30
Ecole du bas
Authors’ talks and book signings
Amadou Barry
Journal d’un exilé: A powerful debut novel that shines a light on the invisible.
11h30 à 12h30
Salle des fêtes
Authors’ talks and book signings
Hanna Diamond
Josephine Baker’s Secret War: Professor of French history, Hanna explores Baker’s clandestine war work for the Free French where, employing her celebrity as cover, she was able to move almost freely through Spain, Portugal, the Middle East and North Africa.
12h30 à 14h
Ecole du bas
Lunch break
Official festival opening and lunch
A lunch happily shared for the modest sum of 10 euros
14h30 à 15h30
Ecole du bas
Authors’ talks and book signings
Michel Jullien et Colette Olive
14h30 à 15h30
Salle des fêtes
Authors’ talks and book signings
The Booker prize-winning: Sir Alan Hollinhghurst
Our Evenings: The story of Dave Win, an Anglo-Burmese actor born in the late 1940s, that unfolds across seven decades, moving from the 1960s to the Covid pandemic.
15h30 à 16h
Cantine de l’école
Teas and coffees
Thé et gâteaux
Home-made afternoon tea and service with a smile
16h30 à 18h00
Salle des fêtes
Authors’ talks and book signings
Périne Magny-Lecoy
Remettre le western à l’endroit : A look back at the great and rebellious singer, Colette Magny who lived the last years of her life in Verfeil-sur-Seye.
19h30 à minuit
Salle des fêtes de Vailhourles
Dinner with the authors
Festival dinner
Conversation and conviviality over local dishes. By reservation only.
Sunday October 12
10h à 11h
Fourchettes et compagnie
Authors “coup de coeur”
Café littéraire français
Over a coffee and a croissant, the French authors present a book that has particularly marked them.
10h30 à 11h30
Salle des fêtes
Authors “coup de coeur”
Our authors’ coups de cœurs
Each of our authors will talk about either a book that they have particularly enjoyed recently, or a work that has had a profound impact on their lives and their writing.
11h30 à 12h30
Ecole du bas
Authors’ talks and book signings
Francis Grembert
Les deux tilleuls: A moving portait of a challenging childhood in rural France in the 1960s.
11h45 à 12h45
Salle des fêtes
Authors’ talks and book signings
A. A. Dhand
The Chemist : Gripping crime fiction from BBC-adapted AA Dhand, exploring the dangerous underworld of a deprived Leeds council estate and the rival drug gangs who control it.
14h30 à 15h30
Salle des fêtes
Authors’ talks and book signings
Lindsey Hilsum
I Bring the War with Me : The UK’s leading war correspondent presents a innovative fusion of vignettes from her 40 years on the front line with poems that turn the horror of war into transcendent works of beauty and meaning.
14h30 à 15h30
Ecole du bas
Authors’ talks and book signings
Mahtab Ghorbani
Mille vies inachevées: The poetry of an Iranian women, political refugee and human rights activist.
15h30 à 16h
Cantine de l’école
Teas and coffees
Thé et gâteaux
Home-made afternoon tea and service with a smile
16h30 à 17h30
Salle des fêtes
“Théâtre musical”
Irina Lopériol et Mandy Govey
From Parisot with Love : theatrical journey to explore linguistic identities through the lens of humor, poetry and muscic. By blending sketches, literary excerpts, and well known songs, they seek out important themes such as cultural clichés and the fluidity between the ever-evolving living languages of French and English. Can art and music, the beauty of words, serve as bridges between cultures, as well as a celebration of diversity?