Imaginales, Part 1

After a couple of days resting and sightseeing in London, we embarked upon the next stage of The Tour – the Imaginales fantasy literary festival in Epinal, France. We caught the Eurostar train to Paris, where we were met by Leslie from my French publisher, Bragelonne, and Lora, my French agent. Soon after we were joined by Peter Brett and his wife and cute daughter, and Helene, our guide and translator.

Two more train journeys later we, Helene, Peter and family arrived in Epinal. We checked into Hotel Le Manoir. For the first night we had a nice room with antique furniture, but on the second we moved into The Blue Room, which the manager described as being like a swimming pool. He was right: the walls and carpet were a perfectly matched shade of blue.

Blue Room

We headed into town to look for dinner, and were so perplexed by the menu of the first restaurant that we returned to the hotel to eat at their restaurant instead, figuring that they'd be more used to tourists. But it turned out that the restaurant was a separate entity to the hotel and not only was it very expensive but we had no luck asking for a table.

But we had spotted a pizza/burger shop not far away, and wound up having some very good pizza.

The next day we met Delia Sherman and Ellen Kushner in the breakfast room, and joined Peter and family to make our way to Imaginales, which was literally across the road, in a lovely park along the river. There was one permanent building, in which the opening ceremony was held:

The Opening Ceremony: Brandon Sanderson, Silvie, Ellen Kushner, Nora Jemesin, Helene, Me, Stephanie, Catherine Dufour, Peter Brett, Lionel.

A big tent with wooden floors called the Bulle de Livre, where authors sat in a huge rectangle of tables at the centre to sign books, and stalls around the outside housed publishing houses, gifts, accessories and artist's work. At the rear was a bar and lounge, and a mural that local artists worked on during the festival.

Bulle de Livre

Panels were held in one of two 'Magic Mirror' temporary wooden pavilions. One was highly decorated:

Magic Mirror 1

Magic Mirror 1 exterior panel

Magic Mirror 1 detail

Magic Mirror 1 doors

Magic Mirror 1 interior

Another big tent housed the gaming part of the festival and a few small tents were set up for administration and other purposes.

It was a lovely site for a literary festival, in a pretty town. More in the next post…