La Société des Gens de Lettres (SGDL), La Charte, and authors' world at Hôtel de Massa - Paris...

In Paris down a faubourg, there's a green jewell box...

In the middle of this garden springs proudly the Hôtel de Massa, a writers house built for Balzac and Victor Hugo (and others). They decided to get united in a society to protect their rights : this is still called Société des Gens De Lettres (Literature People Society).

Nowadays it still goes on fighting for authors' rights : time just slides on the walls, but actions still go on...

Over time other Literature societies joined up, such as Children books society, la Charte Jeunesse, which defends our rights and allows us to catch up with colleagues.

Authors all year long can attend to trainings. It's just like going back to school below friendly's attention of Alexandre Dumas and Régine Desforges, illustrious former Presidents. 

Dominique Lebrun, who's a writer and SGDL Secretaire, tells us the great story of this mythical place. Actually in this room we're not allowed to put our glass of water right down on the table : everything is of historical interest, even chairs ! Its' just magnificent.

It's right there in this room that they got ready for the trial against google pirates and they won. 

And it's right there they tell us about writers' condition : we're fifteen writers attending to this legal rules lectures. 

Speakers are professional : writers, publishers, lawyers.

The fifteen fervent writers come from various universes. There was like a travellers' wind blowing on our promotion !

Lots of children books' writers : Valérie traveller teller, Natacha who's also a journalist, Raphaële and her committed books, Pascal also novellist and China specialist, Roxane-Marie and her world wide albums (who just came back from Abu Dhabi book fair with Nicolas Wild ! Reading his comic books, you'll see it can be epic to travel with him :) )

Translators Françoise, Hélène and Agathe for english, Azita for persian.

Lastly Dominique who writes theatre, Danièle who writes books to study history, Béatrice biographies, and Claude, specialist of Rimbaud.

Sylvie poete, and me, illustrator and sketchbook artist.

A complete fan of authors' aspects !

 

We just studied, studied, studied and I wish we had more time to speak all together ! Fortunatelly, I had time to sketch the area I had never seen. The Seine river by night, black out : I'll discover later I painted with orange instead of yellow, how funny !

I didn't notice an Italian students' class who applauded me when I let down my pencil : it was like a gift, a watercolour of the Eiffel Tower under the moon... 

I didn't know 68' May's block, well guess what, there's still a gaz station of this time ! 

Suddenly, Broca street under the bridge ! Gripari's tales one, my childhood's one, incredible ! Hop, I get my five years old back and draw just like if Nadia and Bachir and the witch were here !

Last but not least, a little walk to family down to Normandy. I had just seen Vincent Desplanche, can notice it with the bunch of pens ! Decided to portrait jockeys training, but why on earth do they all have a pompon on their helmet? So funny...

Last time I told you about Eastern Gipsies soprano singing, here's the Hungarian diva of the group  Ando Drom (on the road) who sings a capella and with band : isn't it awesome ?! Next time I'll tell you about Gipsy punk...