Festival Ciels Australs Program

November 13th to 15th 2026

THROUGHOUT THE WEEKEND

Aboriginal art exhibition - Pop-up Australian café - Wine - Pop-up bookshop - Book signings

Friday – November 13th, 2026 – City Hall of Paris’s 5th arrondissement

IN FRENCH

10am – 12pm
Creative writing workshop for high school students

Isabelle Mercat-Maheu offers high school students of Paris’s 5th arrondissement the chance to become writers for a few hours.

Facilitated by Isabelle Mercat-Maheu, professional writing workshop facilitator since 1977, author.

Using an excerpt from the novel of festival author Tony Birch as inspiration, (La Petite Fille Blanche, Éditions Synchronique, 2025) the students can give free reign to their inner writer and let their creativity speak. Another approach Australian literature!

IN FRENCH

2pm – 3pm
Nicolas Baudin – The forgotten Australian explorer

Join us in discovering the incredible expedition of Nicolas Baudin, fascinating yet forgotten explorer of the early 19th century, to whom we owe the first complete map of Australia.

Presentation by Martine Marin, President of the Amis de Nicolas Baudin society.

While we rarely come across Baudin’s name in the history books, we do owe him the first successful albeit relatively unknown, French expedition. Sometimes referred to as ‘Napoleon’s forgotten expedition,’ it led to the completion of the first full map of Australia. The exploration also allowed several scientists and thinkers who took part in it to complete the first documented reports of Australian lands and the Indigenous peoples living there.

Join us to discover the fascinating history of this forgotten tale!

IN FRENCH

3pm – 4pm
Up Close with Aboriginal Artists: Encounters in the Heart of Australia

Céline Emery-Demion, a French-Australian gallerist, invites the audience to look at contemporary Aboriginal art in a new way, drawing on her career and her visits to desert communities, in an approach that stays close to the artists and their Country.

Presentation by Celine Emery-Demion, Red Dunes Gallery, upon the opening of the Rêver la Terre Exhibition.

More than a simple presentation of Aboriginal art, the talk will take the audience into the artists’ places of life, their stories and their artistic practices, which are constantly evolving between ancestral heritage and the realities of today’s world.

The Red Dunes Gallery is a signatory of the Indigenous Art Code, which seeks fair and transparent exchange for Indigenous artists and their works.

Saturday – November 14th 2026 - City Hall of Paris’s 5th arrondissement

IN FRENCH

9:30am - 11am
Creative writing workshop

Creative writing facilitator and author Isabelle Mercat-Maheu welcomes you to a creative writing workshop, inviting you to unleash your inner author for a few hours.

Creative writing workshop open to all. Reservation only (limited to 12 people).

Reserve here: festivalcielsaustrals@gmail.com

Facilitated by Isabelle Mercat-Maheu, professional writing workshops facilitator since 1977, author.

Using an excerpt from a book of one of the authors attending the festival, you will be able to explore your writing abilities and unleash your creativity. Another way of approaching Australian literature! (for French speakers and writers).

IN FRENCH

10am – 10:50am
Translation Workshop

Try your hand at translating an excerpt from an Australian literary text into French with specialized translator Mireille Vignol.

Open to all participants with a good level of English. Reservation only (limited to 10 people).

Reserve here: festivalcielsaustrals@gmail.com

Facilitated by Mireille Vignol, professional translator.

Mireille Vignol, translator specialized in Australian literature, invites you to dive into the fascinating world of translation for a few hours. Using an excerpt from a book of one of the authors attending the festival, this is an opportunity to try translating from Australian English to French in a unique way of discovering Australian culture!

TRANSLATED IN FRENCH

11am – 12pm
Vast, untamed: Australia’s powerful nature at the heart of the story

In Australia, nature is never mere décor: it shapes bodies, memories, language and stories. Bush, desert, wild coast: how do these potent landscapes become characters in their own right in Australian literature? In what ways do they inform the writer?

Conversation with Tara June Winch and Kim Scott, hosted by Sophie Quetteville.

With an area 14 times the size of France, Australia offers a variety of landscapes and climates: deserts in its centre, humid tropical forests in the north-east, mountains in the south-east, coastal plains and temperate forests, all surrounded by pounding oceans. It is an environment which deeply influences the people and their lives, and inevitably shapes artistic expression.

Australian literature embodies nature: between human life and wilderness, drought and climate change, customs and dispossession, the environment inexorably becomes a defining element for stories and destinies.

TRANSLATED IN FRENCH

12:15pm – 1pm
Conversation with Melissa Lucashenko on the release of her latest novel, Edenglassie.

Discover Melissa Lucashenko's Edenglassie (La Chute d'Eddie Blanket, Synchronique Editions 2026). A razor-sharp historical fresco and a gripping, feisty story imbibed with Lucashenko’s trademark biting humour, Edenglassie is not to be missed - come and have your copy signed!

Conversation with Melissa Lucashenko, hosted by Christine Chaumeau.

Already known to French readers for her novel Too Much Lip (Celle qui parle aux corbeaux , Seuil, 2023), Melissa Lucashenko returns to captivate her readers once again with this meticulously researched historical epic that weaves together two stories of family, love and struggle, set two centuries apart in the Brisbane/ Meanjin region, once known as Edenglassie in the early days of the colony.

Melissa Lucashenko is a Bundjalung author and a long-standing advocate for Aboriginal rights. She co-founded Sisters Inside, an organisation that supports incarcerated women and campaigns for abolition of incarceration. Her writing is praised for its truthful and moving portraits of Australian First Nations life and history, which earned her the prestigious Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2019.

1pm - 2pm Lunch Break

IN FRENCH

2pm - 2:45pm
Stella Miles Franklin – Literary legacy, feminist legacy

At twenty, an Australian bush farmer’s daughter wrote a hugely successful book so insolent and improper for its times that it scandalised her country; then she left everything behind to travel alone to America. In a truly extraordinary and adventurous life spanning several continents, Miles Franklin was to become a founding figure of Australian literature.

Conversation with biographer Alexandra Lapierre (L’ardente et très secrète Miles Franklin Flammarion, 2025, Prix Maurice Druon), hosted by Sophie Quetteville.

Towards the end of the 19th century, a young Australian woman chose to use a masculine pen name to sign her first novel. As such, Miles Franklin was born out of a defying gesture, that of a woman who refused to be reduced to her gender to be read, published and considered. Alexandra Lapierre, a biographer whose passion lies in the fate of women who were historically disadvantaged, invites us to discover anew a founding figure of Australian literature.

Lapierre is delighted to introduce her audience to Stella Miles Franklin, her works, her courage and the legacy that she left for future generations of female authors, and after whom the two major Australian literary awards are named: the Stella Prize, and the Miles Franklin Literary Award.

TRANSLATED IN FRENCH

3pm - 4 :15pm
Resilience and Evolution: Women in Australian Literature

Heroines who resist, and the authors who tell their stories; the voices of Australian women authors and their many characters.

Panel discussion with Evie Wyld, Tara June Winch, Melissa Lucashenko and Anna Funder , hosted by Annette Young  (France 24, host and founder of The 51%).

An extraordinary panel bringing together for the first time, prize-winning Australian women authors Evie Wyld, Tara June Winch, Melissa Lucashenko and Anna Funder for a dynamic conversation on the power and the presence of women in Australian literature today.

TRANSLATED IN FRENCH

4:30 pm – 5:15 pm
Writers, Thinkers, and Social Engagement

Drawing on their different approaches and experiences of being both authors and university professors, three prominent Australian authors and thinkers offer a range of perspectives on the intersection between their academic lives and their creative work.

A conversation with Anna Funder, Tony Birch and Kim Scott, hosted by Vanessa Castejon.

Writing is inevitably shaped by every kind of experience, culture and knowledge in which authors are immersed. But when a large part of one’s career is involved in academic research and transmission, socio-politcal reflection and enagement, how does this affect the writing itself? And inversely, how does academic life inform the creative process? 

Join Anna Funder, Tony Birch, Kim Scott in a discussion hosted by academic Vanessa Castejon, as these three prominent Australian authors and thinkers discuss the intersection between their academic lives and their creative work.

5:15pm
Authors available for book signings in the pop-up bookshop.

VOST

6:30pm
Screening of The Dry  (Canicule) VOSTF

A drought-stricken outback town, a federal agent, and a secret that won’t stay buried. Robert Connolly’s gripping thriller adapted from Jane Harper’s best-selling mystery crime novel, starring Eric Bana.

The Dry (Canicule), 2021, directed by Robert Connolly, starring Eric Bana in VOSTF, 117 minutes.

Follow Aaron Falk, a federal agent based in Melbourne, as he returns to Kiewarra, the small rural community where he grew up, for the funeral of a childhood friend. Haunted by the ghosts of his past, he is plunged into a town and a community gripped by an unprecedented drought and unsolved mysteries...

A psychological thriller based on Jane Harper's bestselling outback-noir novel, The Dry is a slow-burning mystery set in the dust and heat of rural Victoria that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very end...

“taut, tough and psychologically intense, matching wide-open spaces with uncomfortably close drama” The Guardian.

Sunday – November 15th, 2026 – City Hall of Paris’s 5th arrondissement

IN FRENCH

10am – 10:45am
Australia Illustrated

Join Laurent-Frédéric Bollée, graphic-novel writer and author of Terra Australis, James Cook, Les Horizons amers and Loin des eucalyptus as he presents his extraordinary body of work and the stories that inspired them in his trademark engaging and dynamic style!

Talk and signing by Laurent -Frédéric Bollée

Following an earlier successful career in journalism, Laurent-Frédéric Bollée then devoted his work almost entirely to graphic novels. A longtime enthusiast of Australia, he has given us a number of major works on Australian themes, praised by critics and readers alike: Terra Australis and Terra Doloris (with Philippe Nicloux, Glénat), Les Horizons amers (with Laura Gugliemo, Robinson) and Loin des eucalyptus (with Paul Gros, Pictavia).

Laurent-Frédéric is highly engaging speaker, passionate and vibrant, his enthusiasm is contagious - come and (re-) discover his work!

TRANSLATED IN FRENCH

11am – 11:45 am
Conversation with Tony Birch, prize-winning author of The White Girl

Writer and historian Tony Birch stands as a singular figure in Australian literature. Through his essays, poetry and novels, his distinctive voice tells the stories of those living on the margins of society and the complexities of identity with great precision, offering his readers an unparalleled and thought-provoking vision of Australia.

Conversation with Tony Birch
Hosted by Vanessa Castejon

In 1960’s Australia, Odette raises her grand-daughter Sissy alone, on the outskirts of a deeply racially-divided town that hums with shame and secrets. They embark on a journey to find Sissy’s mother, missing for many years, a journey made dangerous by the laws and attitudes under which they are forced to live.

The White Girl lays bare the devastating impacts of the Australian government’s 20th century policy of separating Indigenous children from their families - known today as the Stolen Generations— and explores the lengths we are prepared to go to in order to protect the people we love. Warmly received by French readers, it won the 2026 Prix des Grands D'Monts Océanie, a place in the Bibliothéque Orange’s 2026 selection, and was presented at Festival Rochefort-Pacifique and Festival VOVF.

“A profound allegory of good and evil, and a deep exploration of human interaction, black and white, alternately beautiful and tender, cruel and unsettling.”—Guardian

TRANSLATED IN FRENCH

12pm – 12:45pm
Ghosts and Memory: Who Owns the Stories We Tell?

Join Evie Wyld, Melissa Lucashenko and Mireille Vignol for a haunting conversation on the presence and representation of the voices of the past in contemporary Australian literature!

Conversation with Evie Wyld and Melissa Lucashenko
Hosted by Mireille Vignol

Ghosts move through Australian literature with a quiet presence: the presence of silenced stories, suspended memories, voices seeking to be heard. But telling the memory of another person, of a people, of a past we have not lived raises a delicate question: where do we speak from, and with what legitimacy? This panel explores, with nuance, what it means to give voice to that which exceeds us.

12:45 pm – 1:45 pm Lunch break

TRANSLATED IN FRENCH

1:45pm – 2:30pm
In Conversation with Anna Funder, Prix du Meilleur Livre étranger for Wifedom

'Simply, a masterpiece. Here, Anna Funder not only re-makes the art of biography, she resurrects a woman in full. And this in a narrative that grips the reader and unfolds through some of the most consequential moments - historical and cultural - of the twentieth century.' Geraldine Brooks, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Conversation with Anna Funder, hosted by Emma-Kate Symons

Anna Funder has long loved George Orwell’s writing and, looking for inspiration, decides to re-read his entire works and his biographies. In her readings and musings, she comes across someone she hadn’t expected: Eileen O’Shaughnessy, his wife, whose literary intelligence helped shape his work and whose practical courage saved his life, and whom history has all but erased.

Drawing on newly discovered letters from Eileen to her closest friend, Funder reconstructs the Orwells’ marriage, from the Spanish Civil War to wartime London. As she lifts the screen that has long hidden the writer’s private life, she is led to ask what it takes to be a writer, what it means to be a wife, and who gets to be remembered.

An intimate, inventive and genre-bending work, Wifedom (L’invisible madame Orwell) gives voice to the unseen work of women across the ages.

Trained as a lawyer before becoming a writer and historian specialising in the history of totalitarianism, Anna Funder shines a light, with deep intimacy, on the courage of those who fight to preserve their humanity in the face of tyrannical power. In Wifedom, she explores the chronically oppressive and insidious power of patriarchy.

TRANSLATED IN FRENCH

2:45pm – 4pm
Yarning: First Nations Voices

A reflection on Australia's history, identity and evolution through the perspectives of eminent Australian First Nations writers.

A conversation between Kim Scott, Tony Birch, Melissa Lucashenko and Tara June Winch, and the audience.

Join Kim Scott, Tony Birch, Melissa Lucashenko and Tara June Winch for a yarn - a tradition deeply rooted in Aboriginal culture that is about learning, sharing and connecting with others.

This open exchange between the authors and in direct contact with the audience, offers a reflection on Australia's history, identity and evolution through the eyes of First Nations writers.

In yarning, the transmission of knowledge takes a particular form. It is not simply a matter of telling what is known, but a genuine cultural exchange built on learning, sharing and connection between people, which is both the source and the foundation of the stories that are passed on.

IN FRENCH

4:15pm – 5pm
From Red Dust to Rive Gauche : translating Australian English

How do you translate Australian English, its slang and its many cultural references?

With Mireille Vignol and Lise Garond, hosted by Claire Darfeuille.

Words, phrases, sayings … language evolves, and finding just the right word or phrase to translate a literary work is a true skill and a true art. Come and discover the challenges and subtleties of this fascinating world with Mireille Vignol and Lise Garond, professionals specialising in Franco-Australian translation.

Whether in the search for a particular meaning, or in the effort to transmit accurately a feeling that the original author wishes to convey to their readers, the translator's role is multi-facetted. This challenge is complexified when the language is what we might call vernacular, as in the case of Australian English, where certain expressions are specific to a particular region or country.