About

On 28 September to 30 September 2012, the ‘L’Esplanade du Lac’ in the French village of Divonne-les-Bains will host a bi-lingual Australia festival. Australian artists, storytellers, actors, poets, academics and musicians plus many others will participate in a weekend of fun, learning and exchange.

In 2010 the small French village of Vesancy, which lies under the Jura mountains in Eastern France, hosted the inaugural Australia Festival.  It was so popular the larger village of Divonne-les-Bains has come on board by offering its modern theatre and community facilities to make 2012 an even greater and more inclusive celebration.

The program includes an Australian Theatre Group presenting a play in French, an art exhibition, music, cricket, history lessons, film and documentary screenings, food and wine, workshops for kids and adults, poetry readings discussion forums and many other elements from the strange land to the south.

 

Cate Kennedy the  Australian writer has agreed to be the festivals patron
She lives in Victoria’s north east, on a property on the Broken River.  Her most recent publication, “The World Beneath” (Scribe, 2009) is a novel set in Tasmania.

Her short stories have appeared widely in Australian literary journals and periodicals, in ‘Best Australian Stories’ 2006, 2007 and 2009, The New Yorker and The Harvard Literary Review. Both editions of her fiction have been made into talking books. Upon its U.S. publication, “Dark Roots” was given a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly, was a Barnes and Noble Selection for 2008, and featured as Oprah Magazine’s “New Voice of the Month”

Her previous work includes two critically-praised collections of poetry and a travel memoir “Sing, and Don’t Cry; a Mexican journal” which was broadcast in 2005 and 2008 on ABC Radio National’s “First Person”. During 2007 she wrote a stage adaptation of Charles Waterstreet’s cult memoir “Precious Bodily Fluids” which became her first full-length play. She received an Australia Council grant in 2008 to work on a new play based on the Royal Tour of 1954.