Archives : Évènements

“Springtime in the States”, a workshop in English for young adults ages 12-14, will take place in the library and runs over three consecutive afternoons of three hours each. This is a wonderful way for kids to have fun learning English through games, songs and lots of speaking and moving around. Cost is 75 euros (includes snack, materials and library membership). Please contact the front desk to sign up. Limited to 15.

Love those French restaurants? Feel like you need to speak English more but in a relaxed atmosphere? Join this club which schedules a lunch in a great local restaurant. This event takes place on the second Tuesday of the month. Click here to send an email to the coordinator for more information and the full schedule and to sign up!

The Saturday Reading Group is for anyone who loves to read, socialize in English, and meet new people. There is the line-up of great reading for 2016-2017! Click here for full schedule and line-up of titles 2016-2017. 

The April selection – in collaboration with the film club – is the book “The Hours” by Michael Cunningham. The Hours tells the story of three women: Virginia Woolf, beginning to write Mrs. Dalloway as she recuperates in a London suburb with her husband in 1923; Clarissa Vaughan, beloved friend of an acclaimed poet dying from AIDS, who in modern-day New York is planning a party in his honor; and Laura Brown, in a 1949 Los Angeles suburb, who slowly begins to feel the constraints of a perfect family and home. By the end of the novel, these three stories intertwine in remarkable ways, and finally come together in an act of subtle and haunting grace.

When and where: Meetings will be held in the library once a month on Saturday afternoons starting at 3:00. Cost: FREE to all members of the library. To join: Please contact Anne Kaar at bookgroup@ellia.org

Come along and bring your knitting,

Have a natter while you’re sitting,

Or learn to knit with wool provided,

Needles loaned and stitches guided.

Knitted garments are très chic,

So be in vogue and start this week.

Knit and natter is a free activity open to all members. No need to reserve, just come and enjoy yourself!

This is a special moment when the community gathers together to talk about everything and anything (…in English of course!) and sips coffee and tea. Coffee House is free and open to all library members. Just drop in, no need to reserve! Coffee house is every Friday except during school holidays.

The garden club kicks off a new year of visits to the beautiful gardens in the area! One of the activities open to library members is the Garden Club which organises visits once a month. The first visit of the season will take place on Thursday, April 6th in the afternoon.

The first garden visit this year is to La Baronnière in La Chapelle-Saint-Florent, a romantic park of 30 hectares surrounding a 19th century château, with a large organic kitchen and a neo-gothic chapel. A one hour garden and one hour visit of the château by the owner Anne du Boucheron costs 5 euros.

For more information, for the schedule for 2016 and/or to sign up for visits please send an email to gardenclub@ellia.org.

The pizza and board games evening is scheduled one Tuesday a month from 6-8 pm. Cost is 7 euros (covers pizza and non-alcoholic drinks, 5 euros for children 12 and under and native English speakers). No reservations necessary, just come and enjoy! Dates for 2017 are April 4th, May 16th and June 20th.

The Internet is wonderful and can answer all your questions. For most of us, it is the main source for news. Indeed, we have immediate access to plenty of media from different part of the world. But can they all be trusted? Using different sources and media, the press review helps you to find your way through the news and be well-informed. This is an informal sharing and discussion of the news in English.

Dates:

On Saturdays from 3-4:30PM on the following dates:
April 1st
May 6th
June 3rd

This new activity for library members is organized by freelance journalist and library volunteer: Isma Hassaine-Poirier

Treat yourself to an afternoon of a collective reading of Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry the Fourth. The activity consists of watching a BBC production on DVD and then reading relative scenes. This is a great activity for lovers of language and fans of the great wit. The activity is free for library members. Please sign up at the front desk.

(C) Keith Morris

Meet author Patricia Duncker at the library on Friday, March 31st.

The library is hosting two events with Patricia Duncker, English author of six novels.

10-11 am – come to Coffee House for an informal talk. Mrs. Duncker will be speaking in English about her experiences as a writer. Questions and answers to follow. Free and open to the public. No need to reserve.

2:30 – 4:00 pm – Mrs. Duncker will take a smaller group (maximum 15) to further discussion about writing. Tea and cakes served. Please sign up by sending an email to info@ellia.org or calling the library.

PATRICIA DUNCKER is the author of six novels, all published by Bloomsbury: Hallucinating Foucault (1996), winner of the McKitterick Prize and the Dillons First Fiction Award, James Miranda Barry (1999) and The Deadly Space Between (2002), Miss Webster and Chérif (2006), shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize, 2007, The Strange Case of the Composer and his Judge, (2010) and Sophie and the Sibyl (2015), both shortlisted for the Green Carnation Award. She has also published two collections of short fiction, Monsieur Shoushana’s Lemon Trees (1997), shortlisted for the Macmillan Silver Pen Award, and Seven Tales of Sex and Death (2003), all of which have been widely translated. Her critical work includes a collection of essays on writing, theory and contemporary literature, Writing on the Wall (2002). She has written many critical essays and scholarly articles. From 2007-2015 she was Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of Manchester.