The Maroons

Louis Timagène Houat was a French writer and physician. Originally from Bourbon Island, now known as La Réunion, he was the author of the first novel in Réunionese literature, Les Marrons, which he published in Paris in 1844.

Aqiil Gopee is a Mauritian writer and poet with degrees in Religion from Amherst College and Harvard, where he also trained in archaeology. He has published numerous short stories and poems in Mauritius, France and the U.S., having won the 1st prize of prestigious Prix du Jeune Écrivain in 2023 for his short-story "Insectarium," published by Buchet-Chastel (Paris). He reads classical Arabic, Attic Greek, Akkadian and Egyptian, and along with a first novel, he is currently working on a literary translation of the Qur'an.

Jeffrey Diteman is a literary scholar and translator working in French, Spanish, and English. He has translated the writing of Pablo Martín Sánchez, Raymond Queneau, and Amalialú Posso Figueroa, and regularly translates journalism and children's literature. His academic research focuses on depictions of cross-cultural influence in narratives of extended kinship from Latin America.

Shenaz Patel is a journalist and writer from the island of Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean. As a journalist, she has been a Reuter fellow and worked as editor in chief of a political newspaper before setting up the arts, culture and society section of Week End, a leading Mauritian weekly newspaper.

Patel is the author of four novels, including Le silence des Chagos published in France by Editions de l'Olivier-Le Seuil and in English by Restless Books as The Silence of the Chagos (2019). She has written numerous short stories in French and Mauritian Creole as well as five graphic novels, two plays, and translations.

Patel was an International Writers Program (IWP) Honorary Fellow in the U.S. in 2016, a fellow at the Hutchins Centre-W.E.B du Bois Institute at Harvard University for the Spring semester 2018, and acted as mentor for the Young Women Writers Mentorship Programme of the IWP in 2019.

Patel staged a production of Niamain in 2019 (the story of an African princess enslaved in the 18th century). She is currently working on a novel based on the stories of women who have fought for freedom at different levels. She is also working on a documentary film related to the quest of identity through DNA testing.

Lisa Ducasse is a spoken word artist, singer, and translator from Mauritius, now living in Paris. She released her first poetry collection, Midnight Sunburn, in April 2017, and her first EP, Louvoie, in September 2018. She writes in French and in English, her two native languages, and her work mostly stems from and builds around the sometimes lived, sometimes imagined life of a traveler and the various homes one finds through encounters, moments, and in places all around the world. She specializes in translation for the screen and the translation of contemporary poetry.