Through Facebook, writers return to origins #wu14

It's because of Facebook. Says Ton van de Langkruis, artistic director of writers' festival Writers Unlimited: "You can no longer be that anonymous figure bombarding the world with hermetic texts from a locked attic room. The market is no longer for it. Your main means of communication is facebook. There you have to be open to questions, you communicate with your readers. We are back in the village square where the first stories were once told."  

So with 'Like me' as the festival motto, it is clear that as far as the festival is concerned, writers need to become more storytellers again. Storytellers as are common in the parts of the world from which many of the guests come. This is evident at the performances at Theater aan het Spui, but it is even more apparent in Writers Unlimited's taditional Saturday outing to the Dakota Theatre in the post-war power district of Eskamp. Important guests of honour such as Antjie Krog and Rodaan Al Galidi meet local residents and students from the internationally-oriented Institute of Social Studies, among others, there and exchange stories.

This exchange is to be taken literally: the microphone goes round, and whoever has prepared something, or has a spontaneous impulse, may tell his or her story. The result is a very diverse mishmash of personal stories, in which the unifying power of telling is evident: listening to someone's story in an intimate circle has not yet been surpassed by any television programme.

A now recognised refugee from Bosnia tells how she came to the Netherlands as a child and spent her entire childhood in fear. Fear of having to return to Bosnia when she had been in the Netherlands for so long. The unadorned story, coupled with the gratitude she shows for the eventual recognition of her status in the General Pardon does you a lot of good. At some point, everyone in the small room sat with tears in their eyes. After which Rodaan al Glaidi relieved the atmosphere with his own flight story, which in retrospect was indeed hilarious. But so you need a storytelling talent for that, not just a story.

The music of Neco Novellas, a rather brilliant singer and one-man-band from Rotterdam, made the afternoon complete. Next year again.