“We are all migrants… Writers are migrants.” This is how the Scottish writer Alison Louise Kennedy ended her opening remarks at the seventh annual European Literature Days Festival in Spitz, Austria. These words were a primary focus of discussion throughout the festival. There were discussions about the identity of literature and migrant writing in Europe, especially in its relationship to writers’ new locations.

“Did you go to the Salon du livre in Paris this year?” This is a question I posed in passing to a number of Arab writers who live in Paris and write in their mother tongue. The answer given by most is “no!”

From its founding in 1981, throughout its entire thirty-two years, the Paris Salon du livre never witnessed a protest by writers, poets, translators or publishing houses. The first such demonstration–perhaps the first in history—took place at this year’s book fair.

This is the first time that I’ve finished writing a novel since I’ve been living in France. I believed that writing outside of my country would increase my feelings of being no place. But now I am able to say that writing itself can become a home. It occupies the place of home and accompanies my wakefulness while moving through so many transient places; I inhabit writing when I am between one train or airplane and the next.

In 2008, I came to Paris from Lebanon to attend the annual Salon du livre, for a book launch and signing of my second novel, Wild Mulberries, which had at that time just been translated into French (published by Verticales).