About us · Editorial board
Founder and director
A French-American writer, Benjamin Hoffmann is a professor and holds the chair in French and Francophone literature at The Ohio State University. A graduate of the Sorbonne with a PhD from Yale University, he has taught at Ohio State since 2015. Since 2020, he has directed the Center of Excellence, which promotes French and Francophone culture in the United States. He also directs the Jules Verne writing residency, which welcomes French-language novelists to the American Midwest.
The author of novels and essays, including L’Île de la Sentinelle (Gallimard), Les Paradoxes de la postérité (Minuit), and La Guerre des os (Denoël), he was made a Knight of the Ordre des Palmes académiques in 2024 and elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2025. His work has been supported by the Whiting Foundation, the Beinecke Library, the College of Arts and Sciences at Ohio State, the Centre National du Livre, and the University of Cambridge. He founded French Press in August 2022: he hosts the show and conducts its interviews with the people shaping literature in France today.
Review·by Benjamin Hoffmann·October 26, 2026
An alternate history written in dialogue with artificial intelligence: what if Rome had invented the steam engine? A fascinating experiment that above all reveals how conservative the machines’ imagination is.
Review·by Benjamin Hoffmann·October 17, 2026
Why did John Coltrane's 1966 tour of Japan move its audiences so deeply? Jérôme Schmidt follows this mystery from Hokkaidō to the volcanoes of Kyushu.
Review·by Benjamin Hoffmann·October 7, 2026
It all begins with the death of a cat, after eighteen years of shared life. What becomes of grief when we don’t dare give it its rightful place?
Essay·by Benjamin Hoffmann·July 3, 2026
Sketch of the Poetics of a Form Yet to Be Born: A Fiction That Produces Knowledge About the World by Rigorously Articulating Novelistic Invention and Documented Facts
Review·by Benjamin Hoffmann·April 5, 2026
A choral novel set over a single day in Chicago, following a class of master’s students in stand-up comedy: a fresh reflection on artistic creation in the age of social media.
