The Cavalier: an Evening with Nathalie Quintane and Jonathan Larson

In 1976, a Parisian ‘68er teaching high school philosophy in Digne, France was removed from her job after being accused of “incitement of minors to debauchery.” The poet and writer Nathalie Quintane’s 2021 The Cavalier (translated by Jonathan Larson in 2025 for Winter Editions) delves into the provincial scandal from a distance of fifty years, tracing echoes of revolutionary hope and counterrevolutionary fervor in our political present. Weaving together history, memoir, cultural criticism, and literary fiction, Quintane dwells on proletarian education, the sexual revolution in France, bureaucracy and neoliberalism, and the “eternal problem” of entrenched institutions: “how to get rid of ‘leftists,’ radicals, those who are excitable, etc. Not numerous but boisterous.”

Join us Friday, October 23 at BISR Central as Winter Editions and Barricade: A Journal of Antifascism & Translation welcome Nathalie Quintane and Jonathan Larson for a bilingual reading of excerpts from The Cavalier, followed by a discussion with BISR faculty Lauren K. Wolfe, Rebecca Ariel Porte, and Sonia Werner. Together, they will ask: What is the difference between political literature and writing politically? What has been the fate of the literary and artistic avant-gardes in the face of marketization? What can 1968 teach us about the relationship between politics and cultural production?

The event is free to attend, with a suggested $8 donation. Copies of The Cavalier will be available for purchase. Beer, wine, seltzer, and snacks will be served. Please RSVP below.

Participants

• Nathalie Quintane

  Nathalie Quintane’s multi-genre writing across more than 25 books combines memoir, prose poem, narration, reportage, tract, journalism, autofiction, pastiche, literary criticism, etc. into new literary forms. The Cavalier (Winter Editions, 2025) is her third book to be translated into English, after Joan Darc (La Presse) and Tomatoes (Kenning Editions). She lives and works in Digne-les-Baigns, France.

• Jonathan Larson

  Jonathan Larson is a translator-poet living in Brooklyn. His previous translations of works by Francis Ponge and Friederike Mayröcker have appeared with The Song Cave and OOMPH! Press. His translation of Nathalie Quintane’s The Cavalier came out with Winter Editions in 2025.

Event Schedule

Friday, 7:00-8:30PM
October 23, 2026

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