Déborah Heissler

Background

From 1980 to 1998, training on the piano. In 1988 she won a writing scholarship Antoinette and Pol Neveux of the French Academy.

From 1994 to 2008, she devoted herself to the study of Contemporary Literature and was graduated of the University of Haute Alsace in Culture and Information Science (2008) in Mulhouse (France). She held a PhD in French Literature (2005), joined the Center for European Literary Studies at the University of Haute Alsace (2001–2008) and at the same time published her first collection of poems awarded by the Bleustein-Blanchet Foundation Prize for the Vocation: Près d'eux, la nuit sous la neige, Cheyne publisher, (2005).

Then she became visiting Student at the Library-Museum of the Paris Opera in 2007, conducted research work on Roger Pic's Paris Opera Ballet photographs dedicated to dance in the 1960s and there discovered Jiří Kylián, Pina Bausch, Angelin Preljocaj, William Christie and Nicolas Le Riche.

She then left the National Library of France for India, China, Thailand and finally Vietnam where she taught French as a Foreign Language in several Universities and French Language Departments. Her stay at the University of Xiangtan in Hunan (China) provided her many photographs and poems. Like a swatch of night cut out of its own cloth, Cheyne publisher, 2010 –partly written in Hunan, China– was recognized by the Yvan Goll International Prize for French Poetry in 2011 as well as the Louis Guillaume Prose Poetry award in 2012.

Since the publication of her second collection in spring 2011, she has obtained a writing scholarship from the CRLFC (Franche-Comté, France) and published Chiaroscuro, Æncrages & Co publisher, (2013). The CNL (Paris, France) awarded her a writing scholarship for the "Maison de la poésie de Rennes" in spring 2013.

She became member of the Louis Guillaume Prose Poetry Award in 2015.

She has been invited since 2005 to several readings and meetings, among others, to Unesco for the "Day of Poetry", in the Alliance Française (AF) of Paris (an international organization that aims to promote French language and culture around the world), at the "Readings under the tree" (with Cheyne publisher) or elsewhere in Rennes, Nantes or Paris and participated in many literary events in France, accompanied by the young violinist Elsa Grether for example in reading cycles around Bach and Eugène Ysaÿe or Agathe Llorca (violin/vocals) in a klezmer repertoire of traditional music of Eastern Europe.

She was also invited to read and debate in the first Festival "Poés'Arts" (with Æncrages & Co) in Baume les Dames, France (with Philippe Claudel, Michel Butor and Françoise Ascal or else Sabine Huynh and Armand Dupuy among others ), to a Book Fair in Salins-les-Bains, France in 2011 and an other Book Fair in Paris, France in 2014 (with Luis Mizon and Fabrice Caravaca to present books published by Æncrages & co), she was invited to the "Printemps des poètes" in Paris, Bordeaux and Baume-les-Dames (to read or sign with Claude Chambard, André Velter and Jean-Baptiste Para or Roland Choppard and Armand Dupuy), to the 11th edition of the Festival "Présences à Frontenay" (alongside three Chinese poets, Shucai Chen Chun Sue and Chu Chen, Sabine Huynh and pianists and composers Trami Nguyen and Laurent Durupt) and was invites to read for a Bilingual poetry reading series "Ivy Writers Paris" (co-organized at Delaville Café and Berkeley Books of Paris by two American translators and poets Michelle Noteboom and Jennifer K Dick).

Finally, she was invited to read in many other literary events in France more particularly in the "Maison de la poésie" in Rennes (2013) accompanied by her English translator Jacob Bromberg, in the "Maison de la poésie" in Nantes (2013) (with Frédérique Cosnier) and in the "Maison de la poésie" in Paris (2012) (along with Yekta and Jeanine Baude during a symposium on Louis Guillaume and the prose poem).