Denis Hirson will be appearing at two events in Paris this month. At the Shakespeare & Co Literary Festival, on 19 June, he will read his poetry to the music of South African guitarist and singer Mike Dickman in a free event at Square René Viviani. The festival, which runs from 18-20 June, is run by the Shakespeare & Co bookshop which is situated opposite Notre Dame and has been open every day since it first started trading in 1951. Events are linked to the festival's theme of 'Storytelling and Politics', with this year's authors also including Martin Amis, Fatima Bhutto, Breyten Breytenbach, Petina Gappah, Hanif Kureishi , Nam Le, Njabulo Ndebele, Will Self and Rajah Shehadeh.

Later in the month, on June 29, Hirson will join South African artist William Kentridge at the opening of his 'Five Themes' exhibition at the Jeu de Paume museum to discuss his work in its many mediums - film, sculpture, performance, opera, books and poetry. In the autumn he will appear at the 'Geo-graphics' colloquium on independence in Africa, at the Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels on 25-26 Spetember, performing alongside actress Sonia Emmanuel and saxophonist Steve Potts.

Denis Hirson was born in Cambridge, England, of South African parents in 1951. He lived in South Africa from 1952 until the end of 1973, the year in which his father, who had been a political prisoner, was released from jail. He studied Social Anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and has since worked as an English teacher, and before that as an actor, in France. He has written four 'memory books' all of them concerned with South Africa during the apartheid years: THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR TO AFRICA(1986), I REMEMBER KING KONG (THE BOXER) (2004) and WE WALK STRAIGHT SO YOU BETTER GET OUT THE WAY (2005) were followed by WHITE SCARS (2006). A book of poems, GARDENING IN THE DARK, was published in 2007. I REMEMBER KING KONG was chosen as one of the 25 must-read South African books in a survey conducted by The Centre for the Book in Cape Town, and WHITE SCARS was shortlisted for the SA Sunday Times Alan Paton Non-Fiction Prize in 2007. Denis Hirson is also the editor of two anthologies, The Heinemenn Book of South African Short Stories (with Martin Trump), and The Lava of this Land, South African poetry 1960-1996, and has translated into English a selection of Breyten Breytenbach's poetry, IN AFRICA EVEN THE FLIES ARE HAPPY. He is currently working on a novel.

For more information on the Shakespeare & Co Literary Festival click here and for more on the William Kentridge exhibition at the Jeu de Paume here

Praise for Denis Hirson:

'Whether in prose or verse, Denis Hirson's writings reveal a remarkable combination of strength, delicacy, and humour. After a traumatic childhood in South Africa, where his father was thrown into jail for many years because of his resistance to the Apartheid regime, Hirson settled in France; however, he has never severed the connection between himself and the country where he grew up. For him it remains a place of  pain and absurdity, cruelty and pathos, to which his memories constantly return, and within which he searches constantly for the truth about his own life and the lives of many others.'
--Dan Jacobson, author of HESHEL'S KINGDOM and ALL FOR LOVE

'Hirson's mastery of language allows him to imbue ordinary events with a profundity which touches the very depths of human experience.'                                                                                                      
--Janet van Eeden, Litnet

'Denis Hirson loves words and as we speak the poetic quality of his writing comes through strongly. A gentle soul, you feel the words move through him, and he's playful and wonderful to listen to.'
--Jeanne Viall, Cape Argus

'A book that conveys a sense of one writer's love of words and also their importance in a world where new kinds of information continually challenge the older forms of dissemination. Intelligent and insightful, WHITE SCARS reminds us of the power that the right words read at the right moment can have, and renews our faith in the importance of the written, published word.'
--Tymon Smith, Sunday Times