Individual residencies / Olot
MARIE HL
From Monday, 12 September 2022 to Saturday, 17 September 2022
Bio
Marie HL is a French writer and architect born in 1992. Her academic background includes studies at the Paris Val de Seine architecture school, the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem as well as the University of Le Havre, where she graduated with a creative writing masters degree. Together with four other writers, HL is a founding member of the FàPE (Frontières à Petite Echelle) literature collective which is based on feminism and sorority, with whom she recently launched a creative writing festival in July 2022 titled École Buissonnière. Additionally, HL creates sound poetry with the multiple arts collective Dessin Envolé. Highly affected by her stay in Jerusalem and in the Negev desert, HL chose to dedicate herself to writing and fine arts. Building is no longer an act that she considers ethical, as it should rather be delicately done or not at all. Her work focuses on memory, borders and female conditions from the past to the present, while building links between poetry and prose.
Project
During my stay at Faber, I intend to conduct researches for the writings of my ongoing novel « L’automne aux deux soleils » (« Two suns autumn »). The story takes place in a small village house located in the french Catalonia, right on the other side of the mountains that can be seen in Olot. The narrator, about to enter her thirties, brings back memories of the end of one summer until fall begins. At that time, she was not a teenager yet but not a child anymore. Her brother was a one-year-old baby. And her mum was a mum. The days seemed longer, as they all decided to move in the summer house, instead of going back home.
It is a project about memory, female generations and escaping home. It will include parts of history of the Catalonia region, as well as descriptions of the local landscapes. Also, I would like to conduct interviews with kids and elderlies who live in Olot, in order to create a dialogue podcast between two generations.