Writers in residence 2021
A few words about the writers in residence at the Jan Michalski Foundation in 2021…
STARTING IN JANUARY
Cătălin MIHULEAC, Romania
(in residence from 27 Januray to 24 March)
Born in 1960 in Iaşi, Romania, Cătălin Mihuleac worked as a geologist until the end of the Communist regime, when he started a career as a journalist, writer, and playwright. In 2009 he defended his dissertation on the topic of pamphlets. His recent works combine historical documentation and fiction, verve, humor and the tragic. His novel America de peste pogrom, published in 2014 and translated into French in 2020 as Les Oxenberg & les Bernstein (Éditions Noir sur Blanc), breaks one of the taboos of contemporary history, namely the Iaşi pogrom of 1941. It was awarded the Prix Transfuge for European novels in 2020.
Sasha FILIPENKO, Belarus
(in residence from 28 January to 12 July)
Sasha Filipenko, born in 1984, is a Belorussian author and journalist. He has published five novels translated in different languages, as in French at Éditions des Syrtes : Croix rouges (2018) and La traque (2020). Winner of the Russian Prize (2014), the Znamya magazine Prize (2014), and the SNOB Prize, short-listed for the top literary prizes such as the Bolshaya Kniga and the Booker.
STARTING IN FEBRUARY
Serguei LEBEDEV, Russia
(in residence from 9 February to 7 April)
Sergei Lebedev was born in Moscow in 1981 and worked for seven years on geological expeditions in Northern Russia and Central Asia. Lebedev is a poet, novelist, essayist, and journalist. Since 2010 Lebedev has written several novels on the secrets of the Soviet Union’s history, the violence of Stalinism and its impact on modern Russian life. Lebedev’s books have been translated into 17 languages and were shortlisted for the major Russian and European book prizes. New Vessel Press has brought out in English Oblivion (2016), The Year of the Comet (2017), The Goose Fritz (2019), and Untraceable (2021).
Ariel DILON, Argentina
(in residence from 9 February to 6 April)
Ariel Dilon was born in 1964 in Buenos Aires. He has translated over 90 books by French and English authors into Spanish, including Antonin Artaud, John Cheever, Stephen Dixon, Patricia Highsmith, Alfred Jarry, J. M. G. Le Clézio, Henri Michaux, Henri Roorda, Marcel Schwob, and Kurt Vonnegut. He has served as an advisor on literary translation at CITL (International College of Literary Translators) and CETL (European Centre for Literary Translation). His collection of stories titled El inventor de dioses y otros apócrifos chinos (2009) was awarded a prize by the Badajoz Departmental Council.
Mickael CORREIA, France
(in residence from 9 February to 9 April)
Mickaël Correia is a French journalist and regular contributor to Mediapart, Le Monde diplomatique, La Revue dessinée, La Revue du crieur, and CQFD, a monthly journal of social criticism and experimentation. He is a cofounder and member of the editorial board of the magazine Jef Klak, which blends literary, sound and visual experiments with social criticism. He is the author of Une histoire populaire du football (La Découverte, 2018).
Lucas FERRERO, France
(in residence from 23 February to 11 March)
Lucas Ferrero is an author of French comics and graphic novels and a visual artist. His work has been published in a number of magazines, including Bien, Monsieur, Novland, and Jef Klak, and by éditions cacahuète. Active in publishing, he was a member of the editorial board of the publisher The Hoochie Coochie from 2017 to 2019. He is a member of the visual and editorial board of the magazine Jef Klak and, since 2019, the editorial board of Nunatak, a magazine about mountain-related stories, cultures and struggles.
https://lucas-ferrer0.tumblr.com/
STARTING IN APRIL
Florian BISSIG, Switzerland
(in residence from 12 to 27 April)
Florian Bissig was born in 1979 and studied in Zurich, Berlin, and Austin. Graduating with a degree in philosophy, he went on to earn a PhD in English philology with a study of S.T. Coleridge (Coleridge and Communication, published by Trier in 2015). He works as a freelance journalist and critic in the areas of literature, music and the humanities for various Swiss publications. He is the author of a short critical anthology of Swiss poetry (Mauerlängs durch die Nacht, Limbus Verlag), which was published by Limbus Verlag in 2018. He is currently translating Coleridge’s verse into German while writing a biography of the English poet.
Agata TUSZYNSKA, Poland
(in residence from 15 April to 12 May)
The novelist, poet, biographer, journalist, and playwright Agata Tuszyńska was born in Warsaw, where she lives and works today. In her writing she has focused particularly on Poland’s memory of the war years. Her most important works in English translation are Lost Landscapes (William Morrow, 1998), Family History of Fear (Knopf, 2016), and Vera Gran: The Accused (Knopf, 2013). Her poetry and prose have been translated into many languages. In 2015 she was awarded the Gloria Artis Silver Medal, and in 2016 the Canadian Jewish Literary Awards singled out her book Family History of Fear in the category of Holocaust Literature.
Anne COLLONGUES, France
(in residence from 13 April to 12 May)
Born in 1985, the French writer and photographer Anne Collongues lived in Paris and Israel before settling in Avignon. Her first novel, Ce qui nous sépare, was published by Actes Sud in 2016. She followed this with a book of photographs in dialog with a text by Olivier Rolin, L’heure blanche (Le bec en l’air, 2017) and the fictional texts Le gant (Esperluète, 2018), with pen-and-ink illustrations by Patrick Devreux, and Nous nous sommes rencontrés (Nuit Myrtide, 2019), with illustrations by Sylvie Sauvageon. Her work with a broad range of artists has been an opportunity to deepen her interest in the relationship between text and image.
https://www.anne-collongues.com/
Roxane DURU, France
(in residence from 13 April to 26 May)
Roxane Duru was born in 1986 in Toulouse and works in publishing. She has written several articles for the review Bordel. After spending her nights for several months meeting with transsexual prostitutes in the Bois de Boulogne near Paris, she is now working on a literary project dealing with marginalized areas.
Jorge COMENSAL, Mexico
(in residence from 21 April to 30 June)
Born in 1987, Jorge Comensal studied literature and linguistics at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. He has contributed to a number of magazines and reviews, including Letras Libres, Vice, Este País and Tierra Adentro. He has also received grants from the Fundación para las Letras Mexicanas and the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes. His first novel, a tragicomic fable that delights with its caustic humor, was published in Spanish in 2016 and has been translated into several languages. The English version, titled The mutations, was brought out by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2019. A book of essays Yonquis de las letras (La Huerta Grande) was published in 2017.
STARTING IN MAY
Gabi MARTINEZ, Spain
(in residence from 3 to 17 May)
The journalist and author Gabi Martínez was born in Barcelona in 1971. A prolific writer who enjoys defying strict literary genres, he is known for both his fiction and nonfiction works. Sólo para gigantes (Alfaguara, 2011) and En la Barrera (Heterodoxos, 2012) were shortlisted for the best Spanish-language nonfiction books. The English translation In the Land of Giants: Hunting Monsters in the Hindu Kush (Scribe, 2017) was a runner up for the Society of Authors’ Premio Valle-Inclán Award. His novel Las defensas (Seix Barral, 2017) was selected as “best book of the year” by several Spanish newspapers and media. His latest book is Un cambio de verdad (Seix Barral, 2020).
Diego OLAVARRIA, Mexico
(in residence from 4 to 28 May)
Diego Olavarría is a non-fiction writer and translator. His debut book, El paralelo etíope (FETA, 2015), won the Premio Nacional de Crónica Joven Ricardo Garibay. His second book, Historia de nuestro futuro (Fondo mexicano para la conservación de la naturaleza, 2019) traces the main historical trends 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. His work Honduras, o el canto del gallo was awarded the Premio Bellas Artes de Crónica Literaria Carlos Montemayor 2020.
Paul BESSON, France
(in residence from 4 May to 25 June)
The writer, composer, and visual artist Paul Besson was born in 1987. After studying philosophy, he worked several jobs to support his various artistic activities. His first novel, Paris-Saint-Denis, is both an enlightened dilettante’s journey of self-discovery and a contrarian portrait of an underprivileged suburban city. It was published in 2019 by JC Lattès.
Esther CRUZ SANTAELLA, Spain
(in residence from 18 May to 16 June)
Esther Cruz Santaella studied translation and interpreting. She has been working since 2004 as a freelance translator working from English, German, and Greek into Spanish. After a number of years translating software, medical and political texts, she entered the literary field and has since translated more than forty books (by Thomas Mann, Jan Morris, Rick Bass, Seth, and J.J. Connington). She also gives lectures and holds workshops for students and professionals.
Jean-Yves RUF, Switzerland
(in residence from 19 May to 2 June)
Jean-Yves Ruf is a theater director, actor, and educator. After studying literature and music, he enrolled at the Drama School of the National Theatre of Strasbourg. He has staged some forty productions for the theater and the opera, mostly in France and Switzerland, and has written the texts of around ten collective creations. He served as director of La Manufacture, the school for the performing arts in Lausanne, from 2007 to 2010. He is currently teaching at several schools of higher education in Switzerland, France and Norway.
Susana MOREIRA MARQUES, Portugal
(in residence from 31 May to 9 July)
The writer and journalist Susana Moreira Marques lives and works in Lisbon. Her writing has appeared in Granta, Tin House, Feuilleton, and a number of other publications. As a journalist, she has won several prizes, including the UNESCO Human Rights and Integration Journalism Award (Portugal). Widely acclaimed, her first book, Agora e na Hora da Nossa Morte (Tinta da China, 2013), has been translated into English (Now and at the Hour of Our Death, High Wycombe, 2015), Spanish and French; it mixes travel writing, oral history, and philosophical meditations on the end of life. Her second book, Quanto tempo tem um dia – Experiências de maternidade (Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos, 2020) deals with being a mother.
STARTING IN JUNE
Joanne CHASSOT, Switzerland
(in residence from 1 to 30 June)
After obtaining a doctorate in English-speaking literature, Joanne Chassot began working at the University of Lausanne, first as an assistant at the Faculty of Arts, then as project coordinator at the Office of Equal Opportunity. A recipient of the Prix de la Sorge, Prix Atelier Studer-Ganz and Cenacolo degli Eventi Letterari del Monte Verità, she has contributed to Le Persil, Archipel and Opera Nuova. In 2020, she was awarded a writing grant from the Canton of Vaud for her first novel. She is a member of the literary collective AJAR.
Marta ELES, Hungary
(in residence from 2 to 29 June)
Born in Budapest, Márta Éles studied Polish and Hungarian literature. Before becoming a freelance literary translator, she worked as a librarian and organized the program of literary events at the Polish Institute in Budapest. Her published translations from the Polish since 1997 include such notable writers as Mikołaj Łoziński, Janusz Korczak, and Józef Tischner.
Patrick HERSANT, France
(in residence from 7 to 22 June)
Patrick Hersant is a lecturer at Université Paris 8, where he teaches English literature and practical translation. He is head of the “Multilinguisme, traduction, creation” (“Multilingualism, translation, creation”) team at the Institute of Modern Texts and Manuscripts (ITEM), where he also teaches a course on the genetics of translation. His research focuses on collaborative translation, the translator’s discourse and the revision of literary translations. He has translated a number of English-language writers, including Robert Louis Stevenson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Seamus Heaney.
Krystyna DABROWSKA, Poland
(in residence from 22 June to 28 July)
Krystyna Dąbrowska is a Polish poet, essayist and translator. She holds an MA from the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts and is the author of four books of poetry. Her second published collection, Białe krzesła (WBPiCAK, 2012), won the Kościelski Award and the Wisława Szymborska Award in 2013. Her fourth collection, Ścieżki dźwiękowe (Wydawnictwo a5, 2018), was the winner of the Literary Award of the Capital City of Warsaw in 2019. Her poems have been translated into nineteen languages. Her own translations into Polish include the poetry of W. C. Williams, W. B. Yeats, Thomas Hardy, Thom Gunn, Charles Simic, and Kim Moore.
Diego Amando Moreno GARZA, Mexico
(in residence from 30 June to 28 July)
The Mexican director, writer, and photographer Diego Amando Moreno Garza was born in 1987. A graduate in audiovisual languages from the Faculty of Visual Arts of the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León in Mexico, he obtained a PhD in the Arts and Humanities from CICAHM of Monterrey with a specialization in literature. His latest films include Nosotros, Lucifer and Exergo.
STARTING IN JULY
Asiya WADUD, United States
(in residence from 26 July to 26 August)
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 Project & Belladonna, 2019) and Syncope (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2019). Her recent work has appeared in BOMB Magazine, Best American Experimental Writing, and Makhzin. She teaches poetry to children at Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn, New York. Her forthcoming book, No Knowledge Is Complete Until It Passes Through My Body, will be published in 2021 by Nightboat Books.
Phoebe POWER, UK
(in residence from 5 July from 4 August)
Phoebe Power is a British poet based in York, UK. Her debut full-length collection, Shrines of Upper Austria (Carcanet Press, 2018) received a number of awards including the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and was further shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Other recent projects include Once More the Sea, a sequence about the Durham Coast commissioned by the National Trust, and Christl, a video installation about women war migrants made in collaboration with visual artists.
https://phoebepowerpoetry.wordpress.com/
Raluca Maria HAENA, France / Romania
(in residence from 6 July to 4 August)
The Romanian poet and translator Raluca Maria Hanea was born in 1982 in Transylvania. She studied literature in Romania and later art history and film in Paris, where she has been living for the past ten years. She has contributed to a number of reviews, including Averse, Aka, remue.net, Babel heureuse, N47 and Mula Blanca. In 2015, she published her first collection of poems, titled babil (Éditions du Petit Pois), which she followed up with Sans chute and Retirements (Éditions Unes, 2016 and 2018). Drawing on a constant shift between literary and cinematic writing, her texts are often accompanied by collages and sketches.
Marie-Eve LACASSE, France
(in residence from 19 July to 13 August)
Marie-Ève Lacasse was born in 1982 in Ottawa, Canada. She settled in Paris in 2003, where she completed an MA on the photographer Denis Roche. Between 1994 and 2004 she published three novels in Canada, founded the literary blog laviedebiais.net, and contributed to a number of periodicals and reviews, including France Culture, Paulette, Technikart, and TRAX. Her fourth book, Peggy dans les phares (Flammarion, 2017), focuses on Peggy Roche, the fashion designer, French fashion editor, and secret partner of the writer Françoise Sagan. Her latest publication, Autobiographie de l’étranger (Flammarion, 2020) examines the feeling of foreignness and being “at home” that books embody.
pruine.com | www.fillesdevignes.com
Andrea INGLESE, Italy
(in residence from 20 July to 4 August)
The poet, translator, essayist, and teacher Andrea Inglese was born in 1967 in Turin and currently lives in the Paris area. His numerous publications include literary essays (L’eroe segreto. Il personaggio nella modernità dalla confessione al solipsismo, Università di Cassino, 2003), poetry collections (Inventari, Zona, 2001; Colonnes d’aveugles, Clou dans le fer, 2007; La grande anitra, Oèdipus, 2013), prose texts (Prati/Pelouses, La Camera Verde, 2007; Nell’occhio di chi guarda, Donzelli, 2014) and recently Mes adieux à Andromède (art&fiction,2020). The co-founder of the literary blog Nazione Indiana, he is also the editor of the monthly magazine Alfabeta2.
STARTING IN AUGUST
Axel SOURISSEAU, France
(in residence from 4 August to 1 September)
The French poet Axel Sourisseau was born in Nantes in 1988. After studying art history and archeology, he worked for several years in the field of contemporary art. Since becoming an itinerant author in 2015, he has published two collections of poems with Éditions de La Crypte, Le ravin aux ritournelles (2018) and Catafalque (2020), and a third with Lunatique, Au palais des ombres, featuring photographs by Nicholé Velásquez (special mention by the 2018 Prix Poésie21). An anthropology enthusiast, he explores in his writing the complex connections between territory, myth, and memory.
Sama MOAYERI, Iran
(in residence from 4 August to 21 September)
Sama Moayeri born in 2000 is a senior at University of Tehran (BA, Visual communication). She ranked first nationwide in the Nationwide University Entrance Exam for Arts in 2017, and is an official member of National Elites Foundation. She has been teaching art history and visual creativity for two years now. Passionate about arts, literature, and history, she also works as a freelance photographer and translator. She is currently translating Roberto Camurri’s Il nome della madre from the Italian into Farsi.
Yann APPERRY, France
(in residence from 10 August to 15 September)
Born in 1972, Yann Apperry is a French-American novelist, librettist, scriptwriter, and translator. He did a residency at the French Academy in the Villa Medici in 1997, and published his first novel that same year, Qui-vive (Éditions de Minuit). There followed a number of titles, notably Paradoxe de ciel nocturne (1999), Diabolus in Musica (2000, Prix Médicis), and Farrago (2003, Prix Goncourt des lycéens), published by Grasset. His next book, Vétérinaire des monstres, will come out in 2021. He also writes for the radio, theater, opera, and cinema, with a particular passion for musical projects.
Guy CHEVALLEY, Switzerland
(in residence from 11 August to 8 September)
The winner of the 2010 Prix du Jeune Écrivain de langue française, Guy Chevalley has published two novels to date, Cellulose (Olivier Morattel, 2015) and De fiel et de fleurs (L’Âge d’Homme, 2019). In 2017, he was the recipient of a literary grant from Pro Helvetia. As part of the literary collective AJAR, he co-wrote the novel Vivre près des tilleuls (Flammarion, 2016). He lives and works in Geneva.
Karol LESMAN, Nederland
(in residence from 11 August to 21 September)
Born in 1951, the son of a Dutch mother and a Polish father, the award-winning translator Karol Lesman studied Polish language and literature in both Amsterdam and Krakow. He has translated more than sixty books, both prose and poetry, which include works by the Nobel Prize winners Czesław Miłosz, Wisława Szymborska and Olga Tokarczuk. He lives and works between Amsterdam and Krakow. Currently he is working on the translation of Wiesław Myśliwski’s novel Ucho Igielne (The Eye of the Needle).
STARTING IN SEPTEMBER
Pablo INGBERG, Argentina
(in residence from 1 to 29 September)
The writer and literary translator Pablo Ingberg was born in Dolores, Argentina, in 1960. He has worked in a range of genres and has eight books of poetry, fiction, children’s poems, and essays to his name. He is also an editor and a prize-winning translator of over one hundred books, from the ancient Greek, Latin, English, and lately Italian, by classic authors that include 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 Alberto Nessi.
https://www.pabloingberg.com.ar/poesia/
Rokus HOFSTEDE, Belgium
(in residence from 15 September to 13 October)
Rokus Hofstede was born in 1959 in the Netherlands. He is a Dutch translator and essayist now living in Belgium. His translations of both essays and fiction include texts by Pierre Bourdieu, Roland Barthes, Annie Ernaux, Régis Jauffret, and the complete writings of Pierre Michon. In 2015, in collaboration with Martin Haan, he published a new translation of Marcel Proust’s Du côté de chez Swann (Swanns kant op, Athenaeum – Polak & van Gennep). In 2019, he brought out his Dutch translation of La grande peur dans la montagne by the Swiss Romand writer C.-F. Ramuz.
Patrick BARKHAM, UK
(in residence from 21 September to 13 October)
Born in 1975, Patrick Barkham is an award-winning author and natural history writer for the Guardian, where he has worked for twenty years. He has published at Granta Books The Butterfly Isles (2010), shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize; Badgerlands (2013), also shortlisted for the same prize and winner of the East Anglian Book Award Prize in 2014; Coastlines (2015); Islander (2017), National Geographic Traveler Magazine 2018 Book of the Year; and Wild Child: Coming Home to Nature (2020).
Tim MOHR, United Sates
(in residence from 28 September to 14 October)
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 the best-selling memoirs by the 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.
STARTING IN OCTOBER
Lina MOUNZER, Lebanon
(in residence from 5 October to 15 December)
Lina Mounzer is a Lebanese writer and translator. She contributes regularly to The New York Times and her work has appeared in The Paris Review, 1843, and The Baffler, as well as in the anthologies Hikayat: Short Stories by Lebanese Women (Telegram Books, 2007) and Tales of Two Planets (Penguin, 2020). She writes a monthly column for the Lebanese daily L’Orient Today, chronicling social changes in the wake of the country’s economic collapse. She has translated fiction and essays from the Arabic into English, including work by the Algerian writer Salah Badis and the Lebanese writers Hassan Daoud and Chaza Charafeddine.
Lancelot HAMELIN, France
(in residence from 6 October to 10 November)
Born in 1972, Lancelot Hamelin is a French writer. He has published two novels with L’Arpenteur, Le couvre-feu d’octobre (2012) and À la crête des vagues (2016), as well as the comic books La mort aux yeux de cristal (2018, illustrated by Etienne Oburie), and Dans les eaux glacées du calcul égoïste (2 volumes, 2018 and 2020, illustrated by Luca Erbetta), with the publisher Glénat. He works on dream life, notably during his residencies at the Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers and the French Academy in Rome at the Villa Medici. He is also currently part of a collaborative exploration of a medieval psychiatric refuge in Aleppo with a group of patients and the filmmaker Christophe Bisson.
Valentina RAMONA DE JESUS, Colombia
(in residence from 6 October to 25 November)
Valentina Ramona de Jesús is a Colombian poet and pugilist. Her first book of poems Dos metros cuadrados de piel (Valparaíso Ediciones, 2021) won the National Poetry Prize. The manuscript of her second work La biología de las sombras, received in 2021 the writing stipend giving by the state of Berlin. She has been an invited poet at the Poesiefestival Berlin and the Latin American Poetry Festival Latinale. Her poetry, essay and fiction appear in various anthologies in Colombia and Germany. Her translation into English of Viaje a pie by Fernando González received the Jan Michalski fellowship. She studied cultural studies, philosophy and comparative literature in India and Germany. She currently studies a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing at the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero in Buenos Aires.
Nadine EGHELS, France
(in residence from 14 October to 10 November)
Born in 1957, Nadine Eghels studied clinical psychology at the Free University of Brussels. In 1984, she became the director of communications at Théâtre Varia, where she organized “special days” around the shows. In 1991, she joined Jean-Pierre Vincent at the Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers as the director of communications. In 1999, she founded the association TEXTES & VOIX, where she hosts readings and literary events in collaboration with numerous writers and actors.
https://www.textes-et-voix.fr/
Cristina RIVERA GARZA, Mexico
(in residence from 19 October to 15 December)
Born in 1964 along Mexico’s northeastern border in Matamoros, the writer, critic, translator, historian, and distinguished professor Cristina Rivera Garza holds a Ph.D. in Latin American history. She divides her time between Mexico and the United States. In 2016 she founded a Ph.D. program in creative writing in Spanish at the University of Houston and continues to serve as the program’s director. She is the award-winning author of nearly twenty books that include novels, collections of short stories and poetry, and nonfiction works, interrogating culturally constructed notions of language, memory, and gender from a transnational perspective. Her works available in English translation include No One Will See Me Cry (Curbstone Press, 2003), The Iliac Crest (The Feminist Press, 2017), and The Taiga Syndrome (Dorothy Project, 2018).
Yaghoub YADALI, Iran
(in residence from 19 October to 15 December)
The Iranian fiction writer Yaghoub Yadali 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 the City of Asylum Pittsburgh Organization, USA.
STARTING IN NOVEMBER
Céline BURNAND, Switzerland
(in residence from 15 November to 15 December)
The multidisciplinary artist Céline Burnand studied visual arts at HEAD, the Geneva University of Art and Design, then history of art, literature, and film history in Lausanne, and finally visual anthropology in Berlin. After working for several years in Switzerland and abroad (San Francisco, Paris, Madrid), she settled in Cairo in 2017 to explore social realities that are operating outside of her art studio. She divides her time between teaching, anthropological research, and visual artmaking.
In tandem
Charlotte COOMBE, UK
(in residence from 19 November to 10 December)
Charlotte Coombe is a British translator working from the French and Spanish into English. She has translated The President’s Room by Ricardo Romero (Charco Press, 2017), 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 Holiday Heart by Margarita García Robayo (Charco Press, 2020). In 2020, she co-founded the YouTube channel “Translators Aloud,” shining a spotlight on literary translators.
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Isabel ADEY, UK
(in residence from 19 November to 10 December)
Isabel Adey is a translator (Spanish and German to English) and editor based in Edinburgh. She has taught translation at the postgraduate level and has been translating professionally since 2011. Former winner of the Goethe-Institut Emerging Translators’ Program, she has a passion for unusual books that deal with cultural identity, women’s rights, and migration. Her debut translation of Marc Raabe’s novel Homesick (Zaffre Publishing) was brought out in 2018. She has also translated Self-criticism and Tea in Augsburg by the Colombian writer Marvel Moreno, in collaboration with Charlotte Coombe.
https://www.imatranslations.com/
DATES OF STAY TO BE CONFIRMED
Yvonne Adhiambo OWUOR, Kenya
The Kenyan-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 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.
Burhan SONMEZ, Turkey
Burhan Sönmez was born in Turkey in 1965 and grew up speaking Turkish and Kurdish. He worked as a lawyer for a number of years in Istanbul specialized in human rights before moving to Britain as a political exile. He has written for a number of publications, including The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Die Zeit, and La Repubblica. He has translated William Blake’s poems into Turkish. He is the author of four novels in Turkish, which have been translated into 41 languages, including, in English, Sins and Innocents (Garnet Publishing, 2014), Istanbul Istanbul (OR Books, 2016), and Labyrinth (Other Press, 2019). He received the Disturbing the Peace Award from the Vaclav Havel Library and the EBRD Literature Prize. He is a board member of PEN International.
https://www.burhansonmez.com/en
Daniel GALERA, Brazil
Born in 1979, the Brazilian writer and translator Daniel Galera lives and works in Porto Alegre. He has published five novels, most notably Barba Ensopada de Sangue (Companhia das Letras, 2012), the winner of the São Paulo Prize for Novels in 2012 and widely translated (the English translation, Blood-Drenched Beard, was brought out by Penguin Books in 2014). His most recent novel, Meia-Noite e Vinte (Companhia das Letras, 2016), is available in English as Twenty After Midnight (Penguin Books, 2020). He has also translated into Portuguese fiction by a variety of major English-language authors, including David Foster Wallace, Zadie Smith, Irvine Welsh, and John Cheever.
Photos: Serguei Lebedev © Tanja Draškić Savić | Joanne Chassot © Julie Blanco | Daniel Galera © Suhrkamp Verlag | Andrea Inglese © Mylene Sarant | Karol Lesman © Danuta Wegiel | Valentina Ramona de Jesús © Bernhard Gruber | Jean-Yves Ruf © Benjamin Chelly | Madeleine Thien © Rawi Hage | Axel Sourisseau © Cyprien Leym | Rokus Hofstede © Sophie Kandaouroff
Photos © D.R
