*OFFSITE EVENT* this happens at Grand Hotel Amour, rue de la Fidelité. Just around the corner from After 8 Books.

We are very proud to welcome Céline Semaan for a conversation with Melody Thomas around her book: A Woman is a School, and her practice at large.

What's fashion got to do with politics? Céline Semaan’s first book, A Woman is a School bridges her lived experience as a war refugee with design, climate, culture, fashion, media and beyond. Brought to you by After 8 Books, Semaan and fashion journalist Mélody Thomas will be connecting the dots in an intimate conversation at the Book Bar at Hotel Amour.

Céline is a Lebanese-Canadian designer, writer, artist, speaker, and advocate working at the intersection of environmental and social justice. Céline is the founder of Slow Factory, a 501c3 public service organization addressing the intersecting crises of climate justice and social inequity — filling the gap for climate adaptation and preparedness, building community power through open education, narrative change and regenerative design.

About A Woman is a School : as a war-survivor and child refugee sharing endangered and discredited ancestral knowledge of the Global South, particularly tales from Lebanon from 1948 to 2023—the book follows the tradition of the hakawati, the storytellers of the Levant, holding Indigenous knowledge and wisdom, Céline Semaan, a hakawati herself, documents what she has witnessed throughout her life and the lives of her family members, sharing her upbringing and cultures of resistance.

Melody Thomas is a journalist and author based in Paris. Head of the fashion section of marieclaire.fr for more than five years (2018-2024), she writes for Harper's Bazaar France, Mixte Magazine, ODDA Magazine, Athletica Stylist, etc. Her work explores the impact of clothing on our societies and our identities through politics, society, questions of gender, "race," and eco-responsibility. Published work includes La Mode est Politique, a book in the form of a 27-word lexicon that explores the links between women, clothes, and power.

NB : This event is free-entry, but rsvp helps us organize seatings, so please here's the link : https://www.eventbrite.com/e/a-woman-is-a-school-by-celine-semaan-author-talk-with-melody-thomas-tickets-1286886866259

thank you ! x