Literature Across Frontiers: Recent Episodes
Literature Across Frontiers
European platform for literary exchange and translation sharing podcasts from around the world generated by our activities or relevant to what we do - connecting writers, translators and literary organisations. Our motto: MakingLiteratureTravel
Marcia Lynx Qualey in conversation with Ramy Al-Asheq.
The poet, editor and literary curator discusses the dynamics of the German cultural scene and the position of new arrivals who write in another language, and their need to be part of a community. His activities aim at bringing together Arab authors living in Germany with German writers of the same generation, creating spaces for exchange and mutual translation which broadens the scope and allows readers to expand one’s horizons beyond the widely translated few and the classics to discover new voices.
Marcia Lynx Qualey in conversation with Golan Haji.
Poet and translator Golan Haji came to France from Damascus in 2011 and since then has lived in Paris. Here he talks about multilingualism and co-existence of the four languages he uses every day with Arabic being the main destination of his creative efforts, his passion for minority languages and cultures and obsession with words and their etymologies, and about memory as the main source of writing.
Marcia Lynx Qualey in conversation with Ghayath Almadhoun.
The Palestinian-Syrian poet Ghayath Almadhoun has been living in Sweden since he sought asylum when he was invited to a festival there in 2008. He decided never to do anything other than be a poet, and fourteen years later he has managed to keep his word. Poetry is his only occupation, and he has more recently settled in Berlin, thanks to the DAAD artists residency. His advice to writers arriving from conflict zones is not to fall into the ‘refugee trap’ set up by well-meaning people, not to take the ‘short route’ by accepting a refugee identity rather than that of a writer.
New Voices for Europe a podcast and interview series from Literature Across Frontiers.
Alexandra Büchler in conversation with Rabab Haidar
Latakia-born Rabab Haidar is a prose writer and journalist in Arabic and English, who has lived in Berlin since 2018. She talks about how being connected to writers in Germany while still living in Syria helped her and gave her a sense of safety, and about writing in a cultural and linguistic in-between space after reassessing the unpublished work she brought with her to Germany and adopting a different viewpoint to write about the migrant experience.
New Voices for Europe a podcast and interview series from Literature Across Frontiers
Marcia Lynx Qualey in conversation with Mazen Maarouf
The Beirut born and bred Palestinian writer Mazen Maarouf talks about his life in Iceland, where he settled a decade ago, a place that has offered him safety and stability, but where he feels doubly isolated. He lives between the introspective quietness of the local cultural scene he isn’t part of, and the remote vibrancy of the Middle East, that still serves as a source of inspiration for his writing.
New Voices for Europe a podcast and interview series from Literature Across Frontiers
The playwright and chronicler of the Syrian war Mohammad Al Attar, now living in Germany, talks about his work with Marcia Lynx Qualey.
New Voices for Europe a podcast and interview series from Literature Across Frontiers
Music: Yene Neger [Gossaye Tesfaye] by Debo Band
Olivia Snaije in conversation with Selma M Yonus
The Iraqi poet and journalist moved with her two young children to Norway in 2009 from her home city of Mosul, via Erbil, and was helped by ICORN, the network of cities of refuge, to settle in Stavanger where she applied for asylum. She talks about her journey as a parent, the limitations of being presented as an exile, an outsider and about the recent wave of new Arabic writing emerging from the diaspora.
New Voices for Europe a podcast and interview series from Literature Across Frontiers
Alexandra Büchler in conversation with Rasha Abbas
The short story writer and cultural journalist Rasha Abbas lives in Berlin, the European hub of the Arab artistic diaspora, something she sees as a mixed blessing. Here she talks about treating the migrant experience with humour, as she did in her book The Invention of German Grammar, about not wanting to lose connection with readers in Arab countries, about having her legal status turned into an identity and a literary genre, and about the need for writers to get outside the protective cultural bubble and be closer to ‘real life’.
New Voices for Europe a podcast and interview series from Literature Across Frontiers
Displaced Voices: Translating Writing by Refugee and Exiled Authors was a panel debate organised by Literature Across Frontiers to take place at the London Book Fair’s Literary Translation Centre in March 2020. When the book fair was cancelled because of the Coronavirus pandemic, one of the panellists, Marcia Lynx Qualey, editor of the ArabLit website and ArabLit Quarterly magazine, got together with two of her fellow speakers to discuss their work.
The conversation with Indian translator, poet and scholar Shalim M Hussain, explores the Miyah poetry movement that was sparked in April 2016 in Assam when poet Hafiz Ahmed composed "Write Down I am a Miyah”, an echo of Mahmoud Darwish’s "ID Card," and shared it on social media. Shalim followed with his own poem, "Nana I Have Written," and around thirty other poets have since joined the movement. Shalim is currently Charles Wallace India Trust Fellow hosted by Literature Across Frontiers at University of Wales Trinity Saint David working on a bilingual English-Assamese collection of Miyah poems, set to be published later this year or early 2021.
The panel Displaced Voices: Translating Writing by Refugee and Exiled Authors was organised by Literature Across Frontiers with support from the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union, Arts Council of Wales and the British Council. The Literary Translation Centre at the London Book Fair is sponsored by Arts Council England and Amazon Crossing.
Displaced Voices: Translating Writing by Refugee and Exiled Authors was a panel debate organised by Literature Across Frontiers to take place at the London Book Fair’s Literary Translation Centre in March 2020. When the book fair was cancelled because of the Coronavirus pandemic, one of the panellists, Marcia Lynx Qualey, editor of the ArabLit website and ArabLit Quarterly magazine, got together with two of her fellow speakers to discuss their work.
Omid Tofighian is a philosophy lecturer, researcher, community advocate, and accidental translator. Marcia Lynx Qualey spoke to him about his translation of the multi-award winning book No Friend but the Mountains: Writing From Manus Prison (Picador, 2018)by Kurdish-Iranian refugee Behrouz Boochani, the process of ‘debordering’, and ways we can re-position the work of writers and artists impacted by border violence.
The panel Displaced Voices: Translating Writing by Refugee and Exiled Authors was organised by Literature Across Frontiers with support from the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union, Arts Council of Wales and the British Council. The Literary Translation Centre at the London Book Fair is sponsored by Arts Council England and Amazon Crossing.
Most European literatures are written in “small” or “minority” languages that co-exist alongside dominant ones in a dynamic European diversity. How vibrant are they in terms of the voices and world views they offer? How do they project themselves internationally and how aware are they of literary production from elsewhere? The panellists discuss their literary scenes as authors and translators.
Panelists: Micheál O'Conghaile, writer, translator and publisher | Irish Bel Olid, author, translator and president of the Catalan Writers' Association | Catalan Llŷr Gwyn Lewis, writer, poet and essayist | Welsh
Chair: Professor Elin Haf Gruffydd Jones, Welsh academic, language and literature policy expert
British Writers on Brexit at the Weltempfang – Centre for Politics, Literature and Translation at the Frankfurt Book Fair | Friday 18th October
The Brexit vote brought about a political and constitutional crisis and a deep division in British society. What is the background to what some consider the greatest democratic exercise in British history and others a dangerous triumph of populism, an attack of democracy that threatens to break up the United Kingdom and sever its alliance with the rest of the EU? Writers from England, Ireland and Wales offer their perspectives on the causes and impact of Brexit.
The panel included: Bonnie Greer, writer, playwright, critic, commentator | England Jan Carson, writer and community project facilitator | Northern Ireland Patrick McGuinness, writer and academic | Wales
Chaired by: Alexandra Büchler, Director of Literature Across Frontiers | Wales