Colette Fellous

Colette Fellous
US TOUR
SPRING 2012
BIOGRAPHY
Colette Fellous is a French writer, born in Tunis in 1950. At 17,
she left Tunisia and enrolled in a Modern Literature degree
program at the Sorbonne in Paris. She then attended Roland
Barthes’ classes at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes from
1971 to 1975 and wrote her Ph.D. thesis on Georges Bataille.
Since 1980, she has worked as a producer for the major French
cultural radio station France Culture, and broadcasts « Carnet
Nomade », a literary program which, very much like her
writing, invites you to travel between countries, cities, and
people. She is publisher of the collection « Traits et Portraits »
for the publishing house Mercure de France. She has published
several novels and essays; her latest books are Plein été, and Un
amour de frère, reflections of her dual cultural identity.
Colette Fellous’ entire life changed after her departure from Tunisia. Her French-Tunisian
culture is reflected in her books through superimpositions, subtle writing, and the blurring of
geographical and chronological elements. She started writing in 1982 with Roma, and ever
since, each book points to the next. Fellous plays with her own writing: she rewrites a scene, a
sentence and develops it differently in a subsequent work. Her books all evoke this same
theme of going back and forth between one’s internal and external existence. From Rosa
Gallica to Avenue de France, by way of Midi à Babylone, all explore a home/city dichotomy
and the family maze/mystery. Always eager to learn more about her surroundings, Fellous
admits she can’t live anymore without writing a book.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
In French :
Roma, Denoël, 1982
Calypso, Denoël, 1987
Guerlain, Denoël, 1987
Rosa Gallica, Gallimard, 1989
Frères et sœurs, Julliard, 1992
Midi à Babylone, Gallimard, 1995
Le petit palais, Mille et une nuits, 1995
Amor, Gallimard, 1997
Le Petit Casino, Gallimard, 1999
Ada, tu t'en souviens, n'est-ce pas ?, Inventaire/Invention, 2001
Avenue de France, Gallimard, 2001
MariaMaria, in collaboration with Paul Nizon, Maren Sell éditeurs, 2004
Aujourd'hui, Gallimard, 2005
Plein été, Gallimard, 2007
Pour Dalida, Flammarion, 2010
Un amour de frère, Gallimard, 2011
U.S. TOUR
Wednesday, March 28, 2012 – French Library of Boston
Thursday, March 29, 2012 – University of Southern Maine, Portland
Tuesday, April 3, 2012 – Yale University, New Haven
Thursday, April 5, 2012 – Duke University, Durham, North Carolina