Latest Francosphères issue, edited by Dr Rebekah Vince, goes live online

The latest issue, entitled 'Entre-tenir' (Inter-view), includes research articles on Haitian author Marie-Célie Agnant and creative writing in French language teaching, alongside interviews with Martinican authors Patrick Chamoiseau and Michael Roth; playwrights Mohamed Amin Boudrika and Michel Vinaver; and artists Rafram Chaddad and Caspar Noyons. The creative writing section includes a short story by Marie-Pierre Ulloa, entitled 'La gâchette a cédé', and micro-stories by participants in a workshop led by Franco-Algerian author Mabrouck Rachedi in the context of the Adab literary festival. The open issue also includes several translations, notably of Algerian author Maïssa Bey’s preface ‘Pourquoi la Méditerranée ?’ translated as ‘Why the Mediterranean?’ by Erma Xhamaqi, a former student of QMUL who took the module ‘Postcolonial Francospheres: Memories of Colonialism in the French-speaking World’ and is now the editorial assistant for the journal. Another QMUL alumna and former associate student, Nayara Ruiz Benajes, took the same module, which involved writing a manifesto for or against the concept of ‘Francophonie’ as one of its assignments. A revised version of her piece is included in this open issue, under the title ‘A manifesto for a pluralistic and evolving French literary world’, forming an echo to fellow QMUL alumna and former editorial assistant Jessica Turner’s manifesto ‘What’s in a name?’, published in Francosphères 12.2 (December 2023).