Posts filed under 'Pohoda'

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

Music festivals, poetry readings, and the launch of a new dawn in academic publishing in Sri Lanka!

This  week, our editors on the ground report from events and lectures, spanning large-scale festivals and intimate readings. Julia Sherwood discusses a spotlight on Slovak authors at Month of Authors’ Readings, and Thirangie Jayatilake is here with notes from a talk regarding the current state of Sri Lankan academic publishing. Read on for more!

Julia Sherwood, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Slovakia

Over the summer, literary organizers in Slovakia have tentatively returned to live events, mostly held in the open air. Audience sizes were kept smaller and featured mostly domestic authors because of continuing travel restrictions. Many of these events were streamed and can be watched later—this hybrid format may be one positive legacy of the pandemic.

Slovak writers were the guests of honour at Central Europe’s largest literary festival, the annual Month of Authors’ Readings (MAČ) organized by Větrné mlýny, a publishing house in Brno, Czech Republic and, on the Slovak side, by Literárnyklub.sk. Though the number of locations and participating writers was slightly scaled down, its ambition was certainly not, with thirty-one pairs of Slovak and Czech authors reading from their works every day of the month in both Bratislava and Brno, with some also travelling to Ostrava and Lviv in neighbouring Ukraine. Videos of all readings are available on the MAČ website alongside podcast interviews with the Slovak writers.

Although Pohoda, Slovakia’s largest outdoor music festival, was held from July 7 to 11 at its usual location—a former airfield in Trenčín—was limited to one thousand spectators per day, undaunted publisher Kali Bagala continued the tradition of presenting established as well as emerging authors at the Martinus Literary Tent (sponsored by the bookselling chain Martinus and also organized by Literárnyklub.sk). Young poets Richard L. Kramár and Michal Baláž introduced their second poetry collections, and Lukáš Onderčanin talked about Utópia v Leninovej záhrade [A Utopia in Lenin’s Garden], his documentary novel about some thousand idealistic men and women from Czechoslovakia who headed for Kyrgyzstan in the 1920s to help build socialism. Acclaimed poet and writer and past Asymptote contributor Jana Beňová discussed her latest non-fiction book of rambles around Bratislava, Flanérova košeľa (The Flâneur’s Shirt). There were readings by authors shortlisted for this year’s Anasoft Litera Prize, Ivana Gibová (Eklektik Bastard) and Zuzana Šmatláková (Nič sa nestalo/Nothing Happened),  as well as by Alenka Sabuchová whose novel Šeptuchy (The Whisperers) won the award in 2020. A sample from The Whisperers can be heard on the LIC_Online YouTube Channel, along with excerpts from several other books by contemporary Slovak writers in English and German translation. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

Music, art and linguistics have been knocking on literature's door around the world this week. Asymptote members bring you the scoop.

Literature is interdisciplinary by nature, and the world showed us how this week. From visual art exhibitions and a reading of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Hong Kong to a music festival infiltrated by writers in Slovakia and a commemoration of the late sociolinguist Jesús Tuson in Catalan, there is much to catch up on the literary world’s doings this week.

Hong Kong Editor-at-Large Charlie Ng Chak-Kwan brings us up to speed:

Themed “Fictional Happiness,” the third edition of Hong Kong Literary Season ran from June to late August. The annual event is organised by one of the most important Hong Kong literary organisations, the House of Hong Kong literature. This year the event featured an opening talk by Hong Kong novelist Dung Kai-cheung and Taiwanese writer Luo Yijun, a writing competition, an interdisciplinary visual arts exhibition, and a series of talks, workshops and film screenings. Five visual artists were invited to create installations inspired by five important works of Hong Kong fiction in response to the exhibition title, “Fictional Reality: Literature, Visual Arts, and the Remaking of Hong Kong History.”

Interdisciplinary collaboration has been a hot trend in the Hong Kong literary scene recently. Led and curated by visual artist Angela Su, Dark Fluid: a Science Fiction Experiment, is the latest collection of sci-fi short stories written by seven Hong Kong artists and writers. The book launch on September 2 took place at the base of Hong Kong arts organisation, “Things that Can Happen,” in Sham Shui Po. The experimental project was initiated as an artistic effort to reflect on recent social turmoils through scientific imagination and dystopian visions. The book launch also presented a dramatic audio adaptation of one of the stories, “Epidemic Investigation,” from the collection.

On September 6, PEN Hong Kong hosted a bilingual reading session (Cantonese and English) as part of the International Literature Festival Berlin (ILB) at Art and Culture Outreach (ACO) in Wan Chai. About twelve Hong Kong writers, journalists, and academics participated in “The Worldwide Reading of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights” by reading excerpts of their choice from works that deal with issues of human rights.

Amid the literary and artistic attention to Hong Kong social issues and history, local literary magazine, Fleur de Lettre, will take readers on a literary sketching day-trip in Ma On Shan on September 9. During the event named “August and On Shan,” participants will visit a former iron mine in Ma On Shan to imagine its industrial past through folk tales and historical relics. READ MORE…