“Et Paris devint Paris“: Théâtraliser le récit autobiographique entre les deux guerres: H.D., Mina Loy, Nancy Cunard.“

Three modernist women, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle, 1886-1961), Mina Loy (1882-1966), and Nancy Cunard (1896-1965), came to define the interwar avant-garde through their experimental writing and unconventional pursuits. In her new book, Staging Modernist Lives, Sasha Colby dramatizes these women’s lives and writing in three new plays that traverse the origins of modernism, Parisian literary circles, two world wars, the Spanish Civil War, and race and gender relations in the first half of the twentieth century. In this talk, Sasha will discuss the processes of drawing on literary and historical records to create these plays, with an emphasis on the literary cultures of modernist Paris.

Bio:  Sasha Colby is Director of Graduate Liberal Studies and Associate Professor of English at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada.   She has lectured and performed from Staging Modernist Lives in North America, Europe, and Asia. The book version of Staging Modernist Lives will be released from McGill-Queen's University Press in February.