Antoine Jaquier and Eve-line Berthod
Photo: Antoine Jaquier
Antoine Jaquier was born in Nyon in 1970. The novelist and specialist in Social Affairs and cultural management lives in the Lake Geneva region. He was awarded the Prix Edouard Rod in 2014 for his first novel ‘Ils sont tous morts’, which was published by Éditions de L'Âge d'Homme in 2013. The novel is available in the ‘Les Poches du diable’ series. In 2016, he received the City of Lausanne Readers’ Prize for his novel ‘Avec les chiens’, which was published by Éditions de L'Âge d'Homme in 2015. His third novel ‘Légère et court-vêtue’, for which he received a writing grant from the canton of Vaud (Bourse d'aide à l'écriture), was published by Editions de La Grande Ourse in 2017 and was later republished by Éditions de L'Âge d'Homme. ‘Simili-love’, published by Au Diable Vauvert in 2019, is his first anticipation novel. It is available in the Les Poches du diable series. His post-apocalyptic novel ‘Tous les arbres au-dessous’ was published by Au Diable Vauvert in January 2023.
Photo: Florence Zufferey
Eve-Line Berthod (born 1982) comes from Sierre in Valais. Besides her family life, she keeps busy by teaching and writing. As a poet and editor at the magazine La Cinquième Saison, she chose writing as one might choose to go to an island, to observe from there the movements of the world and of oneself. She is convinced that the light comes from the tiny trifles that make up our lives and searches for traces in her imagination and memory. With a feel for the surrounding nature, her writing pays particular attention to the theme of ‘traces’ – traces as a sign of something that is no longer there. Her first volume of poetry, ‘Ce qui reste’, was published by Empreintes and won the Loterie romande 2023 prize in Valais. In it, an elderly woman embodies her thoughts, whose being and doing she describes in biting yet sensitive words.
Project
Secluded in his mountain hut, the father leads a harsh and lonely life, plagued by his own personal demons. Alerted by a neighbour, his daughter urgently needs to see him: the mountain is rumbling, a landslide is imminent. The village has to be evacuated. Can the daughter, who has so far been helpless in the face of her father’s descent into his personal hell, convince him to leave everything behind and come with her? Failles questions the capacity for resilience, the responsibility of every human being in the face of danger, whether physical or moral, and aims to shed light on the abysses that open up in our lives. Thanks to the employee of my mentor, Antoine Jacquier, I can exchange ideas about my work throughout the creative process. The feedback on my text and the exchange can provide a reflective framework for my practice as well as a better understanding of the challenges associated with contemporary novel writing.
Extract from a final thesis
