Events in the Auditorium

STOCKHOLM 26-27 OCTOBER 2013

These events require separate tickets (SEK 65) which are sold via ticnet.se. They are only valid together with the festival pass (SEK 199).

Saturday, 26 October, 10.30 am

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie will talk on The Great Tribalism of Europe: An African View.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (b 1977) is one of the foremost African writers of her generation. Born and raised in Nigeria, she now shares her time between Nigeria and the USA. Her first book, Purple Hibiscus, was published in 2004, and she made her major international breakthrough with a panoramic novel about the lives of three people during the Biafran War in the 1960s, Half of a Yellow Sun, which was awarded the Orange Prize Her latest novel, Americanah, will be published in Swedish this autumn.

Her lecture at Stockholm Literature will be in English.
In association with Albert Bonniers Förlag.

Saturday, 26 October, 11.45 am

Philipp Meyer talks to Lars Gustafsson

To understand the present you need to write yourself backwards in time. Is the history of Texas the history of the USA, or is that state an exception on the North American continent?

Philipp Meyer (b 1974) is an American writer who made his breakthrough with his first novel, American Rust (2009) and was deemed one of the 20 most interesting authors under 40 by the New Yorker. His second novel, The Son is the first to be translated into Swedish. It has already been proclaimed a future classic by rapturous critics in the USA and the UK. He has lived in Austin, Texas for the last few years.

Lars Gustafsson (b 1936) is one of the most famous and prolific Swedish writers of his generation. He has been a professor of philosophy at the University of Texas in Austin, and made his debut as a writer in 1957 with the novel Vägvila. He writes poetry, novels and essays.

The talk will be in English. In association with Norstedts.

Saturday, 26 October, 1.00 pm

Merethe Lindstrøm talks to Karin Mamma Andersson

Merethe Lindstrøm (b 1963) has long been considered one of Norway’s finest prose writers. She was awarded the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize in 2012 for her novel Days in the History of Silence. The jury said: ”In a gentle, precise and thoughtful prose Lindstrøm relates how a dramatic past slowly breaks into an elderly woman’s life and consciousness.” This year, her novel Saknade will be published in Swedish.

Karin Mamma Andersson (b 1962) is currently regarded as one of Sweden’s greatest artists, and is represented in art museum around the world. Her imagery is quirky and fantastical, usually with desolate, ominous landscapes that provoke the viewer to contemplate. The paintings are often narrative, telling stories of an unexpected kind. She has created the diplomas for several Nobel Laureates of Literature, including Elfriede Jelinek and Doris Lessing.

The talk will be in Norwegian and Swedish. In association with Weyler förlag and the Embassy of Norway.

Saturday, 26 October, 2.15 pm

Olga Grjasnowa talks to Sigrid Combüchen

Is it an advantage for a writer to switch language and country?

Olga Grjasnowa was born in 1984 in Baku, Azerbaijan, in a Russian-Jewish family. In 1996, they fled to Germany. Olga Grjasnowa’s debut novel All Russians Love Birches was an overnight sensation when it was published in Germany in 2012, and has been translated into several languages. She has studied in Poland, Russia and Israel. She is currently working on her second novel and studying in Berlin, where she lives.

Sigrid Combüchen, writer and literary critic, was born in Solingen, Germany, in 1942 and moved to Lund when she was six. She made her debut at the age of 18 with Ett rumsrent sällskap (1960), a novel about a German family and its relationship to National Socialism. Her major breakthrough came in 1988, with her historical novel Byron. In 2010, she was awarded the August Prize for her latest novel, Spill.

The talk will be in English. In association with Weyler förlag and the Goethe-Institut Schweden.

Saturday, 26 October, 3.30 pm

Teju Cole talks to Daniel Birnbaum

Teju Cole (b 1975) is a writer, photographer and art historian. Born in the USA and raised in Nigeria, he now lives in Brooklyn, New York. His recent novel, Open City, has been nominated for several literary awards. He is a regular contributor to the New York Times, The New Yorker and other publications.

The talk will be in English. The other participant will be announced shortly. In association with Natur & Kultur

Saturday, 26 October, 4.45 pm

Monika Fagerholm talks to Jan Kjærstad

What does being a writer entail today? Monika Fagerholm has chosen a Nordic writer she wants to meet and talk to for this event at Stockholm Literature.

Monika Fagerholm (b 1961) is a Finnish-Swedish writer who lives in Ekenäs. Her breakthrough novel from 1994, Underbara kvinnor vid vatten, has been made into a film and translated into nine languages. In 2005, she was awarded the August Prize for Den amerikanska flickan. This year, her most recent novel, Lola uppochner, was published.

Jan Kjærstad (b 1953) is one of Norway’s leading modern prose writers. He was originally a theologian, and his debut book was a volume of short stories published in 1980. Since then, he has written several epic novels, which have made him a key figure in Scandinavian literature. In 2011, he was awarded the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize for his novel Oppdageren. The talk will be in Norwegian and Swedish.

In association with Albert Bonniers förlag, Atlantis and the Embassy of Norway.

Sunday, 27 October, 10.30 am

Taiye Selasi talks to Josette Bushell-Mingo

Taiye Selasi (b 1979) grew up in Massachusetts, studied at Yale and Oxford and now lives in Rome, New Delhi and New York. She has written several renowned short stories and is now publishing her first novel, Ghana Must Go.

Josette Bushell-Mingo (b 1964) has roots in Guyana but grew up in London’s East End. She has worked as a stage actor, including with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Since 2004, she lives in Sweden and is the artistic director of Tyst Teater (Riksteatern’s centre for performing arts in sign language). She was a co-founder of the organisation Tryck, a forum for performing artists with an African background, and is frequently heard in public debates on social issues.

The talk will be in English. In association with Wahlström & Widstrand.

Sunday, 27 October, 11.45 am

Dy Plambeck talks to Suzanne Osten

Dy Plambeck (b 1980) is a Danish prose writer and poet. In 2005, her first volume of poetry, Buresøfortællinger, was published, for which she was awarded the Klaus Rifbjerg prize for new writers. In 2009, she published her novel Texas Rose. This year, her novel Gudfar is being published.

Suzanne Osten (b 1944) is a Swedish dramatist and stage director. She started Unga Klara at the Stockholm Stadsteater in 1975 and will resign as its artistic director at the end of the year. She has been a professor of stage directing at the Stockholm Institute of Dramatic Arts since 1995. This autumn, her diary Det allra viktigaste will be published. The talk will be in Danish and Swedish. In association with Albert Bonniers Förlag.

Sunday, 27 October, 1 pm

Kim Thúy talks to Linda Olsson

The title of Kim Thúy’s latest novel, Mãn, means either “full of joy” or “there is nothing left to long for” or “all dreams have come true”.

Kim Thúy (b 1968) left Vietnam as a boat refugee when she was ten. She now lives in Montreal. Her debut, Ru (2010), was a huge success in Québec and was honoured with Canada’s finest literary award – the Governor General’s Award – and has also received prizes in France. Since then, Ru has been translated into 20 languages, including Swedish. This autumn, her latest novel Mãn, will be published in Swedish.

Linda Olsson (b 1948) has a background as a bank lawyer. She has lived in Auckland, New Zealand, for the past 20 years. Her first novel, Let Me Sing You Gentle Songs, was published in English in 2005, and in Swedish a year later. Since then, she has written two more novels, Sonata for Miriam and The Kindness of Your Nature (2011). The latter she wrote simultaneously in Swedish and English.

The talk will be in English. In association with Sekwa and the Embassy of Canada.

Sunday, 27 October, 2.15 pm

Judith Schalansky talks to Carsten Höller

Judith Schalansky (b 1980) was born in Greifswald in former East Germany and now works as a writer and designer in Berlin. In 2006, she published Fraktur mon Amour, a typographical work on gothic script, which won several design awards. Her literary debut, Blau steht dir nicht: Matrosenroman (Blue Doesn’t Suit You) was published in 2008. Her international breakthrough came with Atlas of Remote Islands. This autumn, her latest book, Giraffe’s Neck will be published in Swedish. The title alludes to biology textbooks.

Carsten Höller (b 1961) is a German artist. He grew up in Brussels and now lives in Stockholm. He works with installations, preferably of a kind that interacts with viewers, and his works are represented in many museums throughout the world. He has a PhD in biology.

Daniel Birnbaum, director of Moderna Museet, art critic and curator, will also take part in the talk, which will be in German, with Swedish interpretation. In association with Pequod and the Goethe-Institut Schweden.

Sunday, 27 October, 3.30 pm

Svetlana Alexievich talks to Irina Sandomirskaja

About the spectrum of thoughts and feelings that the collapse of the Soviet Union aroused among the inhabitants of the former empire.

Svetlana Alexievich (b 1948) is considered to be one of the world’s foremost literary journalists. She grew up in Belarus, in the former Soviet Union. After a few years in Gothenburg and Berlin, she has returned to her hometown Minsk. For 30 years, she has been working on the reportage series on “The Voices of Utopia”, of which the fifth and final volume was recently published in Swedish. She has been awarded numerous international prizes, including Swedish PEN’s Tucholsky Prize, the Leipzig Prize and the Kapuściński Prize. Irina Sandomirskaja (b 1959) is a professor of cultural studies at Södertörn University. She has a PhD in linguistics from the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in Moscow from 1991, and has since then pursued research in the field of first languages, translation, national identity and cybernetics.

The talk will be in Russian, with Swedish interpretation. In association with Ersatz.

Sunday, 27 October, 4.45 pm

Felicitas Hoppe talks to Marcus Lindeen

About the potential of fiction.

Since her debut in 1996, Felicitas Hoppe (b 1960) has been regarded as one of the most intriguing and interesting German writers of her generation. She has been a member of the German Academy since 2007 and was awarded the prestigious Georg Büchner Prize in 2012. This year, her fictive autobiography Hoppe is published in Swedish.

Marcus Lindeen (b 1980) is a director and playwright. His acclaimed debut as a stage director, Ångrarna (2006) resulted in an award-winning documentary with the same title. In spring 2012, he produced Arkivet för orealiserbara drömmar och visioner, which is based on Ingmar Bergman’s discarded scripts and notes.

The talk will be in English. In association with Rámus and the Goethe-Institut Schweden.