A CONVERSATION WITH GERARD DEPARDIEU: AN ACTOR WHO WRITES

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A CONVERSATION WITH GERARD DEPARDIEU: AN ACTOR WHO WRITES

I wasn’t sure what to expect this summer when I received Gerard Depardieu's memoir-essay Innocent, which hits US bookstands in November. For one thing, I had never read any of his books. A quick online search revealed Innocent was Depardieu’s fourth or fifth book, his first work of non-fiction – besides a cookbook – to be published in English.

In France, the man is a giant – an institution. His unique blend of brutish charm, extreme sensitivity and natural panache have attracted some of the world’s best directors, including François Truffaut, Bernardo Bertolucci, Maurice Pialat, Jean-Luc Godard, Marguerite Duras and Ridley Scott.

LSP met the actor who writes in New York in September.

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A CONVERSATION WITH MATTHEW WEINER

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A CONVERSATION WITH MATTHEW WEINER

The first time you meet Matthew Weiner, you can’t help thinking about certain images, certain scenes that feel like a dream or a memory: love and nylon; John Hamm’s La Joconde smile; Peggy Olson’s mythical, lean in-style walk into a new, hard-won job; sunglasses and a Mondrian dress;  a Californian hippie Coke ad. This guy is one of the handful of writers credited with bringing literature to the television screen.

At the annual Book Expo America in New York, the Mad Men creator took a moment to chat with LSP about his literary renaissance, Steinbeck and Dickens, and about how writing a novel liberated him. 

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A CONVERSATION WITH CHIGOZIE OBIOMA

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A CONVERSATION WITH CHIGOZIE OBIOMA

Chigozie Obioma has become an African voice that matters in the literary world. Last year in April -- at only 28 years old -- the Nigerian author published his first novel, The Fishermen (Little, Brown and Company), and swift international acclaim followed. He earned a bounty of literary awards, including being longlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction - one of the most prestigious accolades in literature.

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A CONVERSATION WITH ALAIN MABANCKOU

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A CONVERSATION WITH ALAIN MABANCKOU

Alain Mabanckou is one of the world’s most widely read and acclaimed African authors writing in French. This month his memoir, The Lights of Pointe-Noire, hits bookshelves throughout America.

A poet, essayist and novelist who teaches literature at UCLA, Mabanckou was a Man Booker International Prize finalist in 2015. He is a singular and powerful voice on issues surrounding black identity and culture in the Francophone world, and was handpicked to write the preface to the French edition of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me.

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