Ophelia Redpath - The Lemur's Tale

One of our artists, the lovely Ophelia Redpath, has just had her book The Lemur's Tale published.

Here's the book description:

A ring-tailed lemur is stowed away on a boat from Madagascar, and eventually ends up in the home of an eccentric but dysfunctional family. His night-time antics cause confusion, as he nibbles on the family's plants and raids their larder. But he brings great joy once they discover him curled up in a teapot, filling a little girl's life with hope and happiness.

You can buy it on Amazon here.

Thanks to the lovely photographer and artist Al Wildey for shooting this video of the September Art Show. And thanks to everyone who was on retreat here last month for helping out!

You can check out links to all the artists in the show under the video on Youtube.

The Muses...

One of our neighbor's daughter's, Hope Whitmore, just wrote a piece for Mslexia magazine about the Muses, inspired by names of our rooms at La Muse.

Here's a jpeg of the article below:

Two lovely artists, Mary Scurlock from Virginia in the States and Åse Pleym Bakken from Norway had an expo of the work they created at La Muse.

First there were aperitifs:

Then the Expo:

Shakespeare & Company Bookshop, a bastion of past literary fame, is accepting applications for its 10,000 Euros "Paris Literary Prize."


The prize is funded by the De Groot Foundation and is awarded for a novella. 

Examples they give of classics are The Old Man and the Sea, Animal Farm, L'Étranger and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

Another great thing besides the money is the fact that it is

"open to writers from around the world who have not yet published a book."

The 2 runner-up awards are for 2,00 Euros and all 3 winners are invited to a weekend stay in Paris to attend the Prize ceremony and read from their work at a special event at Shakespeare and Company.

Here are the submission requirements and here's how to enter.

Good Luck!

Happy New Year!

Wonderful Video of French "Time for Outrage" Author

We're ordering his book today as we just stumbled upon it on the Twelve website. Here's a snippet of what they say about him:

Rejecting the dictatorship of world financial markets and defending the social values of modern democracy, 93-old Stéphane Hessel -- Resistance leader, concentration camp survivor, and former UN speechwriter -- reminds us that life and liberty must still be fought for, and urges us to reclaim those essential rights we have permitted our governments to erode since the end of World War II.

Awesome Videos on LGBT rights

First Hilary Clinton at the United Nations:




and here's the son of a gay couple in Iowa:

Irish TV Show

So, the lovely Julianne Mooney talked us up on her slot on Ireland's TV3 show Ireland AM.

You can watch the interview here.

Photos of La Muse by Lowell Brower

Just uploaded a load more photos like this onto Facebook, all taken by the lovely writer Lowell Brower here.

Video and Photos of "Scenes from a Village" Expo

Hey,

So here's the video of Deborah's Expo that we promised:

You can find out more about Deborah here.

Deborah, just before people came to see her paintings...

Deborah talking to Kerry and the American playwright Nora Seilheimer

John having fun talking to the locals about the paintings of their dogs an houses...

Filou waiting patiently for some food from the annual village Aperitif

It was a lot of fun...

"Scenes from a Village" - Deborah Clarke - Expo

Above is the poster for Deborah Clarke's "Scenes From a Village" which is showing here today and tomorrow!

Deborah lives in Grenoble and has been to La Muse three time now. You can check out more of her great watercolors here.

Colline de l'hirondelle

Been a while since we posted anything as we've been renovating and full at La Muse...

Anyway, just wanted to let you all know about our friends' Didier and Jenn's great wine at the Colline de l'hirondelle.

It's in Douzens, not that far from here.

At left is their latest wine ad. Classic!

More adventures in wild food

Oh, look, Kerry brought home a big box of grass to cook for dinner...

Wait! It's a little leek! A wild little leek... 

 

 Clean 'em up, throw 'em in a pan with some butter and lemon or olive oil, and you've got ...

Dinner! Savory, slightly bitter, a meaty dish. Wild food is so nourishing, it's filling. To fill it out into frittata: Pour in four eggs beaten with a grated chunk of Parmesan, and bake it for 20 minutes. So good you'll scurry out for more.

Granny with Handbag Scares Robbers...

Classic. Watch her as she RUNS across the street to hit them :

Life in Labastide

The beautiful thing about winter is that all that chimney smoke makes everything soft. I plan to do a pencil drawing of the above landscape, and maybe a painting of the village in late afternoon sunlight. Someday, when I have the time...

For the first time in our ten years of doing La Muse (yes, it'll be ten years in May) we decided to close for the month of February. Now, that doesn't mean we're sleeping until 11 and reading books by the fire all day. It doesn't really mean we're on vacation. But it does mean we do have more time together and we do have our weekends free. And so this afternoon, we went for a long and lazy walk to the rocks.

Life in Labastide

Umbilicus rupestris (navelwort, penny-pies, wall pennywort). A yummy succulent for winter salads

After getting Seamus and Fionn from the mini school bus the other evening we relished the warm winter sun (temps well into the 60s) on a walk with Gloria to the spring for some fresh source water. It was Seamus's idea to stop on the way to pick some fresh nombrils de Venus (which translates beautifully to "Venus bellybuttons") for that night's salad.

Seamus and Fionn pick greens.

Still-life Bounty: someone's gotta paint these

Fionn and Seamus love to gather wild food

Penny-pies (as they are called in English) grow all over our village in late autumn and winter on the walls, stone steps, and along the base of houses (avoid if within reach of dog wee).  They taste like sprouts, great with a garlicky lemon mustard seed dressing.
They also have a medicinal use -- applied topically, their juice is used by locals to banish warts.

Gloria learning young to live off the land

A fresh finish to split pea fritters, red pepper relish and tahini dressing

Stay tuned for more "Life in Labastide" entries... the reasons we love living where we do, and part of what makes La Muse an amazing experience.

Michael Cunningham: A life trying to "burrow into these little bastards' minds and hearts..."

There's a good article in The Guardian: Michael Cunningham: A life in writing...

Here's what he has to say about the novel. Particularly like the bolded bit below:

"Never more so than in 2011, I feel like a certain interiority is what the novel can offer that no other medium can. I love movies, I love television, I love narratives of all kinds. The novel remains the most effective means of telling a reader what it's like to be somebody else. You can burrow into these little bastards' minds and hearts. And I often find novels that don't do that to be a little unsatisfying. Why would I read a book that doesn't take me some place that otherwise I couldn't go? Watch The Wire. Watch The Sopranos."

 And here's another nice line on Madame Bovary:

"Flaubert took this shitty, shallow little person, and looked at her so intently that he made her a great figure of literature."

Or this one:

"One of the great things about the novel – and one of the terrible things about writing a novel – is that it takes so long. It's so much about going sentence, by sentence, by sentence."

American artists wins at Angouleme

Comic book artist Art Spiegelman just won the top prize for his work at France's Angouleme world comic strip festival.

He's best known as the creator of "Maus," left, a fable of his Jewish father Vladek's experiences in the Holocaust. Hitler and the Germans are drawn as cats and the Holocaust victims as mice. It's the only comic book to ever win a Pulitzer Prize.

R. Crumb is the only other American to win the French prize.

The grand jury prize also went to another American, David Mazzucchelli, for his graphic novel "Asterios Polyp".

Mazzucchelli is best known for his Daredevil and Batman illustrations, working with writer Frank Miller.

Silent Witnesses

We posted about Daniel Brown's new site here the other day, but we just wanted to let you guys know what he's working on right now as it's directly relevant to La Muse and the village - a new series of work called "Silent Witnesses."

It's the first set of nine drawings in the series called "Pathways and Passages” and how:

"seemingly ordinary or unseen architectural elements return them to the consciousness of a community, acknowledging them as living “members” of that community.  The selected architectural elements define the persona of each village, and have acted as silent witnesses to its history."

You can check out a slideshow of his beautiful new images here.