23. INTERNATIONAL LITERATURE FESTIVAL BERLIN

06.09.2023 – 16.09.2023

The 23rd international literature festival berlin begins on September 6. On offer are ten days of readings, discussions, and encounters with some of the most important voices in international contemporary literature, including many current fellows and alumni of the Artists-in-Berlin Program. Francesca Melandri (Fellow 2021) opens the 23rd ilb with her speech The Ultrasound of Silence. Melandri’s work is characterized by an examination of memory culture and forgotten history. “Missing dates from monuments. Absent words in national Constitutions. News which do not appear on the front pages. Omissions, ellipses, erasures, polite avoidances: the most powerful expression of history and politics – and possibly of human relationships in general – is more often than not in what is left unsaid” (Francesca Melandri).

Jeffrey Eugenides (Fellow 1999) talks in The Art of Writing about his beginnings as a writer, contexts of writing and publishing in the U.S. today, and current projects. Amanda Lee Koe and Rajesh Parameswaran (Fellows 2023) will read from their texts and, in a conversation, explore the specifics of writing about the power of love and the love of power, two urgent human desires that inevitably, and sometimes calamitously, intertwine. Lana Bastašić (Fellow 2022) reads from Mann im Mond (Man in the Moon), her new collection of stories about adolescents who are at the mercy of their war-traumatized parents. With Liliana’s Invincible Summer, Cristina Rivera Garza (Fellow 2023) presents “a moving, heartwrenching memoir as well as an unflinching appraisal of the widespread violence against women in Mexico.” Using documents and interviews with family members, she paints a portrait of her own sister who was murdered at the age of 20 by her ex-boyfriend. The Poetry Night brings together four international poets for a multilingual reading, including Nhã Thuyên and Kinga Tóth (Fellows 2023).

ALL EVENTS WITH CURRENT FELLOWS AND ALUMNI

Wednesday, 6. September 2023, 6pm
Festival Opening
With Francesca Melandri and others
Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Friday, 8. September 2023, 7:30pm
Bücherverbrennung 1933
With Volya Hapeyeva and others
Collegium Hungaricum Berlin

Monday, 11. September 2023, 6pm
Love Stories: The Power of Love, or the Love of Power?
With Amanda Lee Koe and Rajesh Parameswaran
Moderation: Miriam Zeh
Haus der Berliner Festspiele

Tuesday, 12. September, 6pm
Cristina Rivera Garza: The Afterlives of Femicide
Moderation: Julia Korbik
Haus der Berliner Festspiele

Wednesday, 13. September, 7:30pm
Jeffrey Eugenides: The Art of Writing
Moderation: Beatrice Faßbender
Haus der Berliner Festspiele

Thursday, 14. September, 7:30pm
Lana Bastašić: Mann im Mond
Moderation: Vivian Perkovic
Haus der Berliner Festspiele

Thursday, 14. September, 8:30pm
Poetry Night
With Nhã Thuyên, Kinga Tóth and others
Moderation: Karolina Golimowska
Haus der Berliner Festspiele