Writers in residence 2020

A few words about the writers in residence at the Jan Michalski Foundation in 2020…

STARTING IN FEBRUARY

In tandem

Élodie GLERUM, Switzerland / Netherlands

(in residence from 5 February to 4 March)

In addition to her translation work in the Netherlands, Elodie Glerum is the author of La belle époque (Paulette Éditrice, 2016), Erasmus (d’autre part, 2018) and La constellation des naufrages (L’Âge d’Homme, 2018). In 2015, she worked with Manuel Sánchez García on Pièce pour deux. In March 2018, she was artist-in-residence at the Sumburgh Head Shetland lighthouse. She is a founding member of the literary collective Ajar and was awarded a Pro Helvetia Literary Grant in 2018.

Manuel SÁNCHEZ GARCÍA, Spain

(in residence from 5 February to 4 March)

Harmony, shape and creative mechanisms lie at the heart of Manuel Sánchez García’s concerns as an artist. His journey, concentrating on these challenges and on their “satellites,” is expressed as music, which is extremely detailed and often introspective, although bursting with energy. Manuel is a composer, keyboard player, and teacher. He works with leading international specialists in Europe and Asia. In 2016, he received the Young Artfund Amsterdam Award in music.

https://manuelsanchezgarcia.com/

Suzanne DOPPELT, France

(in residence from 5 February to 6 March)

The writer and photographer Suzanne Doppelt lives and works in Paris, where she was born. She has published some ten books with Editions P.O.L, most of which revolve around the concept of perception. Her latest work, Rien à cette magie (2018), is inspired by Chardin’s Soap Bubbles. She was managing editor of Bayard Press’s Le rayon des curiosités imprint and is now on the editorial board of the journal Vacarme. Several of her books are available in English translation, including Ring Rang Wrong (Burning Deck, 2004), The Field Is Lethal (Counterpath Press, 2011), and Lazy Suzie (Litmus Press, 2015).

Jaspreet SINGH, Canada

(in residence from 5 February to 24 June)

Jaspreet Singh is an award-winning Indian-Canadian writer. His books include two novels, Chef (Bloomsbury, 2010) and Helium (Bloomsbury, 2014); a story collection, 17 Tomatoes (Vehicule Press, 2004); and a collection of poems, November (Bayeux Arts, 2017). His essays have appeared in Granta, Brick: a literary journal, The Globe and Mail, and the New York Times. His work has been translated into French, Italian, Arabic, Spanish and Punjabi. His memoir My Mother, My Translator will be published in 2021, and his sixth book, Nature , a collection of poems, is slated for publication in 2022.

http://www.jaspreetsinghauthor.com/

Marius HULPE, Germany

(in residence from 10 February to 28 May)

Marius Hulpe studied Cultural Science in Hildesheim, Berlin and Zurich. He has published the poetry collections Wiederbelebung der Lämmer (Ammann Verlag, 2008), Einmal werden wir (Lyrikedition 2000, 2013) and Süße elektrische Nacht (Haus Nottbeck, 2014), the essay Der Polen-Komplex (Hanser Verlag, 2016) and in autumn 2019 his first novel, Wilde grüne Stadt (DuMont), which deals with the labyrinth of deracinated identities. His texts have been adapted for the screen and radio. He was awarded the NRW Literature Prize and the Villa Decius and the Berlin Senate fellowships.

Marcos Giralt Torrente, Spain

(in residence from 13 to 24 February)

Marcos Giralt Torrente was born in Madrid in 1968 and is the author of novels, novellas, and a book of short stories. He is the recipient of several distinguished awards, most importantly the Spanish National Book Award in 2011. His works have been translated into French, German, Greek, Italian, Korean and Portuguese. The End of Love (McSweeney’s Publishing, 2013) is his first book to appear in English, following by Father and Son : A Lifetime (Sarah Crichton Books, 2014).

Myriam Wahli, Switzerland

(in residence from 26 February to 15 March)

Myriam Wahli was born in 1989 in the Bernese Jura. Most of her first writings were short stories. Published works : Le poids des poissons perdus (Le Noyau, 2013), Essai sur un vieux (-36° Éditions, 2012) and Petites épiphanies du quotidien (-36° Éditions, 2011). Her novel Venir grand sans virgules has been published by Éditions de l’Aire in 2018. The same year, she was awarded a grant from Fell-Doriot.

STARTING IN MAY

Marina SKALOVA, France / Russia

(in residence from 29 May to 6 June)

Marina Skalova is a poet, translator, and playwright. Born in Moscow, she studied philosophy in Paris and in Berlin before settling in Switzerland in 2013, where she earned a degree from Bern University of the Arts HKB. She is the author of the bilingual collection Atemnot (souffle court) (Cheyne, 2016), the musical, poetic and political text Exploration du flux (Seuil, 2018), and the play La chute des comètes et des cosmonautes (L’Arche, 2019), which has been performed in Geneva, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna.

http://marinaskalova.net/

STARTING IN JUNE

Myriam Wahli, Switzerland

(in residence from 2 to 16 June)

Anita ROCHEDY, France

(in residence from 4 to 25 June)

Born in France in 1984, Anita Rochedy has been living in Switzerland since 2004, where she translates from the Italian and English. She is a graduate of the Faculty of Translation and Interpreting of the University of Geneva and the European Centre for Literary Translation (CETL), Brussels. She owes her start in literary translation to Paolo Cognetti’s Le garçon sauvage (Il ragazzo selvatico), published by Editions Zoé in 2016. She has translated the same author’s Les huit montagnes (Le otto montagne), published by Stock in 2017 (and winner of the Prix Médicis étranger). In 2019 the Collection bilingue imprint of Éditions d’en-bas brought out Nuovi giorni di polvere/Nouveaux jours de poussière by Yari Bernasconi, a joint publication with the Centre for Literary Translation of the University of Lausanne, and Service de presse Suisse. Anita was also awarded the Prix Terra Nova by the Schiller Foundation of Switzerland in 2018.

https://anitarochedy.wordpress.com/presentation/

Diego OLAVARRÍA, Mexico

(in residence from 29 June to 3 August)

Diego Olavarría is a non-fiction writer and translator. His debut book, El paralelo etíope (FETA, 2015) won the Ricardo Garibay National Young Book Award. His second book, Historia de nuestro futuro (Fondo mexicano para la conservación de la naturaleza, 2019) goes over the main historical currents that have transformed the natural environment of Mexico. His writing has appeared in several leading literary magazines of Mexico and Latin America, including Letras Libres, Etiqueta Negra and La Tempestad.

STARTING IN JULY

Julia VON LUCADOU, Germany

(in residence from 1 July to 26 August)

Julia von Lucadou was born in Germany and has lived in New Zealand, Canada, USA, England, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. She holds a bachelor in literary writing and a PhD in film theory. She has worked as an assistant film director, a producer for German television. Her first novel, Die Hochhausspringerin, was published in 2018 by Hanser Berlin. It was shortlisted for the Swiss Book award 2018. It will be published in English in 2021 by World Editions, as The High-Rise Diver.

Sabine MACHER, Germany

(in residence from 6 July to 3 August)

Sabine Macher was born in West Germany in 1955. She went to France while completing her German studies and ended up staying. A writer, translator of poetry, and photographer, she is also involved in contemporary dance, theater, and performance art. It is dance, moreover, that has led her to transforming her public readings most often into performance pieces. Since 1992 she has been writing books as well. The L Notebook (La Press, 2014) is available in English. Producing audio pieces and radio productions, Sabine Macher returns the essential spoken word to its place in poetry and documentaries.

Matthieu DUPERREX, France

(in residence from 8 July to 21 August)

The artist and writer Matthieu Duperrex holds a PhD in the visual arts and is the art director of the collective Urbain, trop urbain. His first book, Voyages en sol incertain, enquête dans les deltas du Rhône et du Mississippi (Wildproject & La Marelle, 2019), as in his subsequent writing, draws on field studies in anthropized areas, combining literature, social sciences, and visual or digital art.

https://www.urbain-trop-urbain.fr/author/matthieu-duperrex/

Piotr SOMMER, Poland

(in residence from 8 July to 16 December)

Born in 1948, the poet, English-to-Polish translator and essayist Piotr Sommer holds an MA in English from the University of Warsaw. Since 1994, he has served as the editor of Literatura na Świecie, a journal of foreign writing in Polish translation. He has published numerous collections of poetry (which have been translated into English, German, Romanian, Slovak, and Slovenian) and is the recipient of the 1988 Kościelski Prize. Two collections of his work have been brought out for English readers, Continued (Wesleyan University Press, 2005) and Things to Translate and Other Poems (Dufour Editions, 1992). He has also published collections of essays on poetry and poetry anthologies, and translated into Polish the work of a number of major poets, including John Ashbery, Bertolt Brecht, John Cage, Seamus Heaney, and Charles Reznikoff.

Regina LÓPEZ MUÑOZ, Spain

(in residence from 16 July to 20 August)

Regina López Muñoz was born in Málaga in 1985. She decided to become a full-time literary translator in 2011. She has done Spanish versions of such English language authors as Edna O’Brien, Gloria Steinem, Uzodinma Iweala, Mary Karr, Marina Keegan, Roald Dahl, and Vera Brittain. She has translated into Spanish such French authors as Jean Genet, Léon-Paul Fargue, Philippe Djian, Jean Giono, and Prix Goncourt winners Éric Vuillard, Jérôme Ferrari and Frédéric Pajak. She belongs to Las Cuatro de Syldavia, a collective of graphic novel translators.

STARTING IN AUGUST

Oksana ZABUZHKO, Ukraine

(in residence from 13 August from 25 september)

Oksana Zabuzhko (born in 1960) is one of Ukraine’s major writers and public intellectuals. She is the author of over twenty books (poetry, fiction, nonfiction) and is internationally known thanks to her novels Field Work in Ukrainian Sex (Amazon Crossing, 2011; original Ukrainian edition, 1996) and The Museum of Abandoned Secrets (Amazon Crossing, 2012; original Ukrainian edition, 2009). Her books have been translated into sixteen languages and have won her many awards, including a MacArthur Grant, the Angelus Central European Literary Prize, and the Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine. Oksana uses a feminist lens to examine Ukrainian identity and the mark made by history.

http://zabuzhko.com/en/index.html

Francesca Ilaria FAIELLA, Italy

(in residence from 24 August from 10 October)

A state-certified (HMONP) architect, Francesca Ilaria Faiella is also a graduate of the Paolo Grassi School of Dramatic Arts in Milan. As an actress and director, she has produced several films and plays both at home and abroad. She uses the new technologies and contemporary playwriting to pursue her interest in urban geography and oral history. She curated the exhibition Casa Garibaldi, una storia levantina and assisted William Karel on his film for Arte, François Mitterrand, que reste-t-il de nos amours ? (2016).

STARTING IN SEPTEMBER

Célia HOUDART, France

(in residence from 2 September to 5 October)

After studying literature and philosophy and working ten years as a theatre director, Célia Houdart began writing full time. She is the author of five novels, all published by P.O.L. Since 2008 she has also been working with Sébastien Roux on audio works that they present as installation art or sound experiences. She was awarded the French Academy’s 2008 Prix Henri de Régnier for her first novel Les merveilles du monde, and the Prix Françoise Sagan in 2012. Her novel Quarry (Dalkey Archive Press, 2020) is available for English readers.

http://www.celiahoudart.com/

Anna BIKONT, Poland

(in residence from 2 September to 16 December)

The Polish journalist and nonfiction writer Anna Bikont cofounded and edited the underground weekly Tygodnik Mazowsze, which was associated with the Solidarity movement when martial law gripped the country from 1981 to 1989. In 1989 she was one of the cofounders of Gazeta Wyborcza, the first independent daily in post-Communist Europe. Her book My z Jedwabnego has been translated into many languages; the French edition (Le crime et le silence) took the European Book Prize in 2011. The English-language edition of the book, The Crime and the Silence: Confronting the Massacre of Jews in Wartime Jedwabne (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) was published in 2015. In 2017, she received a doctorate honoris causa from Gothenburg University.

Anita ROCHEDY, France

(in residence from 25 September to 11 October)

https://anitarochedy.wordpress.com/presentation/

STARTING IN OCTOBER

Jennifer CROFT, USA

(in residence from 6 October to 16 December)

The American writer and critic Jennifer Croft is also a translator working from the Polish, Ukrainian, and Spanish. She divides her time between Los Angeles and Buenos Aires. Her English translation of Flights (Fitzcarraldo, 2017), by the Polish author and winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature Olga Tokarczuk, took the 2018 International Booker Prize. Jennifer has also received NEA, Cullman, PEN, Fulbright and MacDowell fellowships and grants, as well as the inaugural Michael Henry Heim Prize for Translation, the 2018 Found in Translation Award, and a Tin House Scholarship for her novel Homesick, originally written in Spanish and published in English by Unnamed Press in 2019. She is currently translating Olga Tokarczuk’s Księgi Jakubowe (The Books of Jacob).

Nicholas JUBBER, UK

(in residence from 7 October to 11 November)

Nicholas Jubber was born in England in 1977. After graduating Oxford, he had been teaching in Jerusalem for two weeks when the Second Intifada broke out, at which point he decided to travel around the Middle East and East Africa. He has written plays and numerous articles for prestigious news sources such as The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, and The Observer. Inspired by this first trip, his first book The Prester Quest (Transworld, 2006) won the Dolman Travel Book Award. He also published Drinking Arak off an Ayatollah’s Beard: A Journey Through the Inside-Out Worlds of Iran and Afghanistan (Ingram, 2010), The Timbuktu School for Nomads: Lessons from the People of the Desert (John Murray Press, 2016) and Epic Continent: Adventures in the Great Stories of Europe (John Murray Press, 2019).

http://www.nickjubber.com/

Isabelle SBRISSA, Switzerland

(in residence from 13 October to 11 November)

Isabelle Sbrissa is a Swiss poet, writer and playwright. With her small publishing house disdill, she produced Poèmes Poèmes¹ (2013) and a journal entitled La feuille. Two collections of verse followed, Produits dérivés (Le Miel de l’Ours, 2016) and Ici là voir ailleurs (Éditions Nous, 2018). With Nathalie Garbely, she launched in 2014 Le Kâdi, a kind of traveling contemporary poetry library, which frequently hosts public readings. Her next book, Tout tient tout, will be released by Héros-Limite in the spring of 2020.

Marina SKALOVA, France / Russia

(in residence from 28 October to 16 December)

http://marinaskalova.net/

NEW RESIDENCY DATES TO BE DEFINED

Tim MOHR, USA

(new residency dates to be defined)

Tim Mohr is an award-winning translator of writers such as Wolfgang Herrndorf, Alina Bronsky, Charlotte Roche, and Sybille Berg. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed Burning Down the Haus (Algonquin Books, 2018), a history of punk in the DDR. In addition, he has collaborated on best-selling memoirs by musicians Gil Scott-Heron, Duff McKagan of Guns n’ Roses, and Paul Stanley of KISS. Prior to his writing career, he made a living as a club DJ in Berlin.

Susana MOREIRA MARQUES, Portugal

(new residency dates to be defined)

Susana Moreira Marques is a writer and journalist who lives and works in Lisbon. Her writing has appeared in Granta, Tin House, Feuilleton, and many other publications. As a journalist, she has won several prizes, including the UNESCO Human Rights and Integration Journalism Award (Portugal). Her first book, Agora e na Hora da Nossa Morte (Tinta da China, 2013), widely acclaimed and translated into English (Now and at the Hour of Our Death, High Wycombe, 2015), Spanish and French, mixes travel writing, oral history, and philosophical meditations on the end of life. Her second book is about motherhood and is coming out soon.

Yvonne Adhiambo OWUOR, Kenya

(new residency dates to be defined)

The Kenya-born writer Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor obtained a Master of Philosophy (Creative Writing) from the University of Queensland, Brisbane. She is the author of the well-received Dust (Knopf, 2014), in which family secrets reveal the wounds of Kenyan history, and Dragonfly Sea (Knopf, 2019). Her stories and essays have appeared in a range of literary magazines, including McSweeney’s, founded by Dave Eggers, and Granta. For her contributions to the arts, she was awarded the 2016 Head of State Commendation (Kenya). She is currently working on a new novel tentatively titled The Long Decay.

Ariel DILON, Argentina

(new residency dates to be defined)

Ariel Dilon, born in 1964 in Buenos Aires, has translated over ninety French and English works into Spanish, including publications by Antonin Artaud, John Cheever, Stephen Dixon, Patricia Highsmith, Alfred Jarry, J.M.G. Le Clézio, Henri Michaux, Henri Roorda, Marcel Schwob and Kurt Vonnegut. His book El inventor de dioses (tales) was awarded a prize by the Badajoz Departmental Council. He was writer- and translator-in-residence at multiple European institutions, and has served as an advisor on literary translation at the CITL (International College of Literary Translators) and the CETL (European Centre for Literary Translation).

Agata TUSZYŃSKA, Poland

(new residency dates to be defined)

The novelist, poet, biographer, journalist, and playwright Agata Tuszyńska was born in Warsaw, where she lives and works. Her most important works in English translation include Lost Landscapes (William Morrow, 1998), Family History of Fear (Knopf, 2016), and Vera Gran: The Accused (Knopf, 2013). Her poems and prose have been translated into many languages, including English, French, Hebrew, Spanish, Macedonian, Dutch, Korean, and Greek. In 2015 she was awarded the Gloria Artis Silver Medal and in 2016, the Canadian-Jewish Literary Award in the category of Holocaust Literature for Family History of Fear.

http://www.agatatuszynska.com/

Gabi MARTÍNEZ, Spain

(new residency dates to be defined)

Gabi Martínez is a journalist and author born in Barcelona in 1971. A prolific writer who enjoys defying strict literary genres, he is known for both his fiction and nonfiction works. His novel Las defensas (Seix Barral, 2017) was selected as “best book of the year” by several Spanish newspapers and media. Sólo para gigantes (Alfaguara, 2011) and En la Barrera (Heterodoxos, 2012) were shortlisted for the best Spanish-language nonfiction books in 2011 and 2012. In the Land of Giants: Hunting Monsters in the Hindu Kush (Scribe, 2017), the English translation of Sólo para gigantes, was a runner up for the Society of Author’s Premio Valle-Inclán Award.

In tandem

Charlotte COOMBE, UK

(new residency dates to be defined)

Charlotte Coombe is a British translator working from the French and Spanish into English. She translated The President’s Room by Ricardo Romero (Charco Press, 2017) and Fish Soup by Margarita García Robayo (Charco Press, 2018), and Eduardo Berti’s The Imagined Land (Deep Vellum, 2018). She has been awarded two PEN Translates grants, in 2015 for Abnousse Shalmani’s Khomeini, Sade and Me (World Editions, 2016), and in 2019 for the forthcoming Holiday Heart by Margarita García Robayo (Charco Press, 2020).

http://www.cmctranslations.com/

Isabel ADEY, UK

(new residency dates to be defined)

Isabel Adey is a translator (Spanish and German to English) and editor based in Edinburgh. She has taught translation to the postgraduate level and has been translating professionally since 2011. Former winner of the Goethe-Institut’s Emerging Translators Programme, she has a passion for unusual books that deal with cultural identity, women’s rights, and migration. She is currently editing Andrea Jeftanovic’s Theatre of War (Charco Press, slated for publication in July, 2020) while her debut translation of Marc Raabe’s novel Homesick (Zaffre Publishing) was published in 2018.

Asiya WADUD, USA

(new residency dates to be defined)

Asiya Wadud is the author of Crosslight for Youngbird (Nightboat Books, 2018), Day Pulls Down the Sky… a Filament in Gold Leaf, written with Okwui Okpokwasili (Danspace & Belladonna, 2019) and Syncope (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2019). Her collection No Knowledge Is Complete Until It Passes Through My Body is slated for publication in 2020 by Nightboat Books. Her recent work has appeared in BOMB Magazine, Best American Experimental Writing, and Makhzin. Asiya teaches poetry to children at Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn, New York.

https://www.asiyawadud.com/

Marie-Ève LACASSE, France

(new residency dates to be defined)

Marie-Ève Lacasse was born in 1982 in Outaouais, Canada, on the border of French-speaking Quebec and English-speaking Ontario. She left Canada and settled in Paris in 2003, where she completed a Master’s on the photographer Denis Roche. Between 1994 and 2004 she published three novels in Canada, created the literary blog laviedebiais.net, and contributed to a number of periodicals and reviews, including France Culture, Paulette, Technikart, and TRAX. In 2014 she began writing her fourth book, Peggy dans les phares (Flammarion, 2017), which features Peggy Roche, fashion designer, French fashion editor, and the secret partner of the writer Françoise Sagan.

http://www.marie-eve-lacasse.net/

Yaghoub YADALI, Iran

(new residency dates to be defined)

Yaghoub Yadali, a fiction writer from Iran, is the author of three short story collections and three novels including Rituals of Restlessness (Phoneme, 2016; original Farsi edition, 2004), which won the 2004 Golshiri Foundation Award. He worked as a producer for Iranian television until 2007 when he was sentenced to a year in prison for having depicted an adulterous affair in Rituals of Restlessness, forcing him to choose exile in the United States. A contributor to Words Without Borders, Consequence Magazine, and Sampsonia Way Magazine, he has been writer-in-residence at the University of Iowa, Harvard University, and City of Asylum Pittsburgh Organization, USA.

Pablo INGBERG, Argentina

(new residency dates to be defined)

Pablo Ingberg was born in Dolores, Argentina, in 1960. He is a writer with eight books of poetry, fiction, children’s poems, and essays to his name, an editor, and a prize-winning translator of over one hundred books, from the ancient Greek, Latin, English, and lately Italian, by a pantheon of prestigious authors that includes Sappho, Sophocles, Virgil, Catullus, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, Lewis Carroll, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Luigi Pirandello, Italo Svevo, and the Swiss Italian writer Alberto Nessi. He has co-written two Translators’ Bill of Rights.

https://www.pabloingberg.com.ar/poesia/

Daniel GALERA, Brazil

(in residence from 14 September to 7 October)

Daniel Galera lives in Porto Alegre. He started publishing on the internet in the late 1990’s and self-published his first book in 2001. Since then he has published five novels, most notably Barba Ensopada de Sangue (Companhia das Letras, 2012) winner of the São Paulo Prize for Novels in 2012 and translated worldwide (for the English edition, Blood-Drenched Beard, Penguin Books, 2014). His most recent novel is Meia-Noite e Vinte (Companhia das Letras, 2016), available in an English-language translation: Twenty After Midnight (Penguin Books, 2020). Daniel has also translated English-language fiction by a variety of major authors, including David Foster Wallace, Zadie Smith, Irvine Welsh, and John Cheever.

Valentina RAMONA DE JESÚS, Colombia

(in residence from 3 November to 16 December)

The poet and journalist Valentina Ramona de Jesús was born in Colombia and grew up in India. Her first collection of poems, Dos metros cuadrados de piel (2019), was published by KLAK Editions. She has been a guest poet at a number of events, notably the poesiefestival berlin. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in various anthologies. She has also worked as an editor for SAND Journal and Alba magazine lateinamerika lessen, and as a curator at SAVVY Contemporary. Currently based in Berlin, she is working on her first English translation, the study Viaje a pie (1929) by the Colombian philosopher Fernando González Ochoa (1895-1964), who wrote the book after traveling around his native country for a year.

Writers in residence 2020

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