Everything to do with letters
In False Bitches, Camila Sosa Villada grants the reader an intimate and moving glimpse into the colourful, but also harsh and lonely existence of (Argentine) transsexuals. And thus holds a merciless mirror up to the intolerant, judgmental society. A 'party' 'Being a transvesti is a party' was the motto of Angie, one of Camila Sosa Villada's transgender friends. An incantation...
113 decibels. That's what the elated audience managed to pull off with Nicole Kaandorp (no relation to Brigitte, but at least as talented) at the Pandora. It happened in the first round of the semi-finals in the NK Poetry Slam 2023, the unofficial opening of the International Literature Festival Utrecht, which we call ILFU in English....
Nicole Kaandorp has become Dutch Poetry Slam 2023 champion. After preliminary rounds across the country, eight poetry slammers competed in the 21st edition of the NK Poetry Slam on Saturday night 23 September, during the International Literature Festival Utrecht. Nicole took on Eelco Couvreur in the final battle and captured the national title. The new national slam champion won the...
The work of Colombian writer Laura Restrepo (73) has long been forgotten in the Netherlands. With her new, impressive novel Song of old lovers, she makes a well-deserved comeback. She already has 13 novels to her name. Yet Colombian writer Laura Restrepo, who lives mostly in Spain, is a rather unknown to most Dutch...
Raw and moving is Catelan-Moroccan writer Najat el Hachmi's new novel, Monday We Will Be Loved. An impressive story about the meaning of true freedom, and the price you have to pay for it. 'Monday, Monday, Monday... Monday we will be different. Monday we will be loved.' Every week, young woman Naïma tries to...
Falun Ellie Koos, Arja Mari and Max Urai will receive a C.C.S. Cronestipendium this year. This is a grant from the municipality of Utrecht for promising Utrecht authors. They will each receive 3,000 euros to enable their next publication. "A number of submissions stood out immediately because of the surprising addition the authors make to current Dutch fiction: in narrative voice,...
On Sunday 24 September, Babs Gons will be installed as Poet Laureate in Utrecht. This is also the starting signal for a two-week tour of Gons through the Netherlands and Flanders, together with a thousand other poets. The poetry caravan '1000 Dichters' will travel by tour bus to a different city every day, returning to Utrecht on 7 October.....
In Zutphen, I attended Jeroen den Herder's congenial small-scale cello festival. There, two young Portuguese students gave a lecture/recital on their research project on the music of the fado singer and composer José Zeca Afonso, an important voice in the 1974 Portuguese Revolution. At home, I looked up that music. It turned out to be the perfect background when reading "Friesland, my...
Salman Rushdie will give his first interview in the Netherlands on 30 September during the ILFU (International Literature Festival Utrecht) after the attempt on his life last year. Journalist Chris Keulemans and writer Abdelkader Benali will speak to Rushdie at TivoliVredenburg via a livestream connection about his new novel Victoria City and his extensive body of work. Rushdie last appeared live on stage in 2018
I had - in a previous house - a neighbour who gave a young tree in front of our apartment complex a bucket of water every day. He had a thing for trees, as he had brought back some Sequoia seeds from a trip to the US, back in the day. He had put these in the ground in various places. One near the house, and that one, because of possible...
Adriaan van Dis with an intensely coquettish Renate Dorrestein, who (rightly) got him on the ropes with a few well-aimed pussy remarks. This excerpt from 1991 opened Zomergasten 2023 #4, and it chopped. Nostalgia all around, and during those first minutes of Theo Maassen with animal and children's book author Bibi Dumon Tak, the bar was set high. Would Theo Maassen with this...
Theatre collective Thomas, Sacha and Jos creates performance about universal love After years of fruitful cooperation with master storyteller Toon Tellegen and several performances based on his work, theatre collective Thomas, Sacha and Jos will perform Two Little Old Ladies at this summer's Theatre Festival Boulevard. Tellegen's book consists of 43 love stories, each starring two little old ladies. Thomas, Sacha and Jos made a...
The opening weekend of the International Literature Festival Utrecht includes a performance by Maggie Nelson, the NK Poetry Slam, the Utrecht Book Market, the start of the 1000-Dichtersmarathon and the inauguration of Babs Gons as Poet Laureate. The following two weeks will see performances by Philippe Claudel, Jeanette Winterson, Amitav Gosh and David van Reybrouck, among others. Two weeks later,...
In addition to the traditional Filter Translation Prize for the most outstanding translation of the year, a new, additional prize will be launched for the first time in 2023, and it will be for translated children's and young people's books - with a separate jury, a completely separate statute and with a prize money of €10,000. Both juries struggled during their search for the best translation to their own...
24 September to 7 October 2023: a two-week tour of 1000 poets and poetry readers along 13 cities in the Netherlands and Flanders, in the run-up to the 40th Night of Poetry. In the run-up to the 40th Night of Poetry, 1,000 poets will read poems in 13 different places in the Netherlands and Flanders. The poetry marathon '1000 Poets' will take place in...
On 14 June 2023, the Authors' Association's Screenwriters Network and the Dutch Directors Guild are joining the global day of action Screenwriters Everywhere. In doing so, we support the 11,500 members of the Writers Guild of America West and Writers Guild of America East, who have been on strike since 2 May. Actions are planned in more than 20 countries. Screenwriters in the...
I can't resist mentioning it, because I think they were doing it for a reason, the dancers in the musical Wuthering Heights making really visible big rounds with their arms one time: this was a half-second reference to Kate Bush's world-changing 'windmill swings' in the music video to her legendary 1978 pop song. A subtle nod as in my...
Christian cultural traditions, such as Catholicism, are in the doldrums. How do they get out? Whatever you call backgrounds in terms of gender, origin and beliefs, looking at them all positively helps, with compassion and humour; how beautiful and funny are all these different people and expressions! So I am now happy to write about two people who climbed the cultural ladder, and just...
This year's ILFU (International Literature Festival Utrecht) will take place from 24 September to 7 October, under the motto "What's the story?". The programme includes regular ingredients such as the Utrecht Book Market, the NK Poetry Slam, the YALFU (Young Adult Festival) and De Nacht van de Poëzie. At the heart of ILFU on 30 September will be the festival day 'Exploring...
On 7 October, the 40th edition of the Night of Poetry will take place as the conclusion of the ILFU Festival. In the Grote Zaal of TivoliVredenburg, Ester Naomi Perquin and Piet Piryns will present, as always, about twenty poets and a handful of 'entr'actes'. Among the first confirmed poets' names are two veterans who were already there at the first Night in 1980,...
'People who consider themselves traditionally on the left don't want to criticise woke because they are afraid they are aiding and abetting the right, and they certainly don't want that. And yet they feel that there is something wrong, something that is not really left-wing about woke discourse. That's what I'm trying to untangle....
Tell! Storytelling festival opens your gaze to the world around you. In collaboration with Het Verhalenhuis and De Vertelacademie, Theater Kikker presents a unique fusion of stories, music, culinary bites, an inspiring exhibition and much more on Saturday 13 May. On this day, you will listen to the stories our city has to offer. Come to Tell! and get to know...
Some writers are at the forefront, others write their novels in the lee. Richard Osinga (51) belongs to the latter category. With each book, he gains in eloquence. Mint is the new shoot on the stem of his increasingly interesting oeuvre. At one point, Richard Osinga himself was a little too lazy. After his novel...
In his new, fifth novel, writer Stefan Popa (1989) returns to Romania, which previously served as the setting for his debut novel Vanished Borders. The novel's protagonist is a 'half-breed', just like the writer, but the other way round. While Popa, is a son of a Dutch mother and Romanian father, protagonist Alex Petrescu, on the contrary, has a Romanian mother and...
Writer and theatre-maker Nhung Dam (38) tried to be as Dutch as possible, but is increasingly embracing her Vietnamese roots. Because these are precisely what make her unique, she now realises, and offer a wealth of stories. Including for her second novel, Definition of Love. Two worlds Nhung Dam (38) more or less grew up in two worlds. Her cradle was in...
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