Shenaz PATEL

2016 Resident
French

Shenaz PATEL (fiction writer, playwright; Mauritius) has written many novels, plays, and short stories in both French and Mauritian Créole: best known is her 2005 novel Le silence des Chagos. As a working journalist, she writes about social and cultural issues; much of her writing seeks to unearth the unsaid and untold. She participates courtesy of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State.

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Happening Now

  • Just completed: “Sense of Belonging,” a bilingual Iowa City + Paris-based podcast series commissioned by Walid Rachedi and produced by NFW grad students in both cities, with support of the US Embassy in Paris.

  • Word has just reached us of the sudden death, in his hometown Gdańsk, of the novelist, poet, essayist, and playwright Paweł Huelle. RIP.

  • “I regret that poems can’t serve as witnesses in military tribunals; they can only testify in the court of history,” writes Iya Kiva in an essay for the project “War Is… Ukrainian Writers on Living Through Catastrophe.”


  • Congratulations to novelists Mansoura Ez-Eldin and Taleb Al-Refai for placing on the 2023 finalist list of the prestigious Prix de la littérature arabe.

     

  • Samuel Kolawole’s first novel, The Road to the Salt Sea, is announced for a July 2024 release.

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