Nina Leger, author

mardi 17 février 2026
à 13:00
Conversation
Amphithèâtre

For several years now, I have been writing about places. I would like to share with you what this practice has taught me and the questions it raises. I have published two novels about places, Antipolis and Mémoires sauvées de l'eau. One tells the story of a city, the other of a river.
In each case, the place is at the centre, not as a character, but as the very substance of the novel.
In each case, the novel is a means of expressing realities.
In each case, the exploration of these realities leads to the unearthing of buried violence. Writing about constructions leads me to talk about destruction and to make room for what has been erased. Places have made me question my practice and what seemed most obvious about it. What does it mean to tell a story? What does a story cover in order to exist? Can the novel accommodate divergent versions, dissonant voices, and bring them together without pretending to reconcile them? These are some of the questions that places pose to those who write about them.

Nina Leger is a novelist. Her latest novels are stories of places. Antipolis (Prix écrire la Ville) is the story of a utopia. Mémoires sauvées de l'eau (Prix du roman historique) follows the course of a Californian river from the gold rush to the megafires.
This spatial approach to the novel is informed by Nina Leger's training in art history, which she has been teaching at the École des Beaux-Arts in Marseille since 2018. In parallel with her literary activity, she writes regularly for and with artists.

Cycle
Proposed by architects and teachers Gwenaëlle d'Aboville and David Enon, the Tuesday Lessons cycle Fictions: Other Worlds invites listeners to hear from writers who construct fictions, much like architects do when they design projects.