Joanna Biggar Featured in Bastille Day Reading

Joanna Biggar at North Natomas Library

SACRAMENTO, CALIF.: The North Natomas Library & Sacramento Poetry Center's International Poetry Tour featured novelist Joanna Biggar reading excerpts from her debut novel, "That Paris Year". This installation of the reading series was in celebration of Bastille Day, which is done worldwide in honor of French culture. Biggar's appearance, therefore, was perfect for the occasion.

Jennifer Pickering, reading her poem "Juggler of Fire". She wrote this poem in France last year, when she travelled there with her husband.

The reading started with an open mic, which featured Jennifer Pickering and Andrea Roberge. I also got to read Comrade Fatso's "Dambudzo", since I happened to be carrying 'Moving Spirit: The Legacy of Dambudzo Marechera in the 21st Century'. Jennifer and Andrea read a bilingual poem (English & French) entitled 'Juggler of Fire/Jongleur de Feu'.

Andrea Roberge reading the French version of "Juggler of Fire"

Mine reading was...just about Marechera as rendered by Comrade Fatso, a spoken word I take seriously, one who bring his subject matter to life. The audience loved "Dambudzo" for Bastille Day.

The featured reader, Joanna Biggar, is a writer, journalist, and  teacher who has published fiction, poetry, personal and travel essays, and a hundred feature articles for newspapers and magazines. She has traveled solo in most remote corners of China, chaired a school board in Ghana, worked as a journalist in Washington, DC, and taught school kids in Oakland, California, where she lives. The author's special places of the heart remain France and the California coast.

Joanna Biggar's first novel, publishe by Alan Squire Publishing in 2010, is entitled 'That Paris Year'. As the synopsis reveals, "It features five young heroines who arrive on the banks of the Seine in 1962 for a Kennedy-era joy ride, following the long, rebellious wake of poet Arthur Rembaud's "Drunken Boat". But what they get is an education of a different sort; they discover a mythical country shaped not only by the upheavals of history, but by the great French writers of the twentieth century.

They absorb the revolutionary ideas of Andre Malraux, the sensuality of Colette, the existential angst of Albert Camus and Jean Paul Satre, and the feminist theory of Simone de Beauvoir. And as they move from the grueling demands of the Sorbonne by day to late nights of discovery in smoky cafes, they learn that seduction is intellectual as well as sexual...."

Copies of 'That Paris Year'

 Biggar said she took close to 30 years writing this novel. This means numerous drafts, and long breaks (years) between those drafts. But now she has a product she is proud of, and one well-rendered. She belies that writers have to be great readers since reading is part of the writing process. As a teacher of writing herself, she emphasizes a healthy combination of reading and writing. Of course, reading may take the space of writing, but the result, when writing finally happens, tends to be more worthwhile.

part of the audience

 This was an inspiring reading. The question and answer session led to a discusssion of the writing process and craft. You can never have too much to read, so, of course, I got my copy of 'That Paris Year'.

my copy getting signed.

In the next session of the International Poetry Tour, I will be lecturing on domain of intertional poetry, which simply means I will lead participants through a map of contemporary world poetry, relying mostly on the poets on International Poetry Web. The event is at 4PM and ends at 5PM. I look forward to it.

Today's event was hosted by Frank Dixon Graham.

Frank Graham, host of today's event.