Crossing Border Antwerp Festival Guide

9 NOVEMBER 2025 ANTWERP 9 NOVEMBER 2025 ANTWERP

Before Dengue Boy’s fearsome needle stood a delicious meat sorbet, nothing more and nothing less than a throbbing chunk of succulent blood sausage. Carried along by the vertigo of this new and unrestrainable urge, a sudden revelation crossed Dengue Boy’s hairy antenna, clearer and more lucid than ever, despite the cacophony all around him: I’m a girl, not a boy, he reasoned somewhat incongruently. Michel Nieva — Dengue Boy

Budgie — The Absence - Memoirs of a Banshee Drummer

Brian Eno and Bette A. The Weather Station Sandro Veronesi Kamel Daoud Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek Abel Ghekiere Antjie Krog Eduardo Halfon

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SUNDAY 9 NOVEMBER 2025 15:00 - 23:00 ARENBERG ANTWERP

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Graphic design: Robert Muda van Hamel (Spacebar)

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Crossing Border is the Netherlands’ leading international literature and music festival.

voices and showcases alternative music acts in intimate, unexpected live settings.

The 4th Antwerp edition takes place on 9 November 2025 at Arenberg.

This year’s programme features over 30 writers and artists with many exclusive events and special projects created uniquely for Crossing Border.

The festival’s mission is to connect and inspire through imaginative storytelling and artistic expression. It brings together acclaimed international authors for exclusive appearances, introduces exciting new literary

FESTIVAL LOCATION Arenberg Arenbergstraat 28 Antwerp

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POP-UP: OTHER WORLD BOOKSHOP The Other World Bookshop is located in the foyer of Arenberg.

Thomas Azier is a Dutch

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Books by all featured authors will be available for purchase, and authors will sign books after their appearances.

Amirtha Kidambi’s Elder Ones pushes the boundaries

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of free jazz, composition and electronic forms, with the raw riotous energy of “spiritual punk”, comprised of vocalist, composer and keyboardist Amirtha Kidambi, saxophonists Matt Nelson and Alfredo Colon, bassist Lester St. Louis, and drummer Jason Nazary. The ensemble’s instrumentation undergirded by the drone of the Indian pump organ harmonium forms an intricate landscape for Kidambi’s voice to traverse; she battles against its mountainous heights before sliding speedily

down its slopes. Truly making an instrument of her vocal chords, Kidambi’s syllabic, frenzied, and powerful utterances weave into the alluring, hypnotic, and confronting jazz melodies of the ensemble.

Dealing with issues such as power, capitalism, colonialism, white supremacy, and fascism, Amirtha Kidambi's Elder Ones are not shy to confront and resist systems of oppression and control through their music.

As such, a sense of ancestral energy pulses through their performances; it feels as though

they are not alone on the stage, but are rather carried along by an old knowledge buried deep within the music.

The subversive spirit and sense of collectiveness cultivated during mass demonstrations across New York City in the wake of the tragic murder of George Floyd serves as the driving force behind their forthcoming album New Monuments.

Kidambi describes the title as a metaphor for tearing down old colonial monuments, paving the way for the rebuilding of new symbols.

composer, producer, singer and performer. With Power To The People Who Don’t Want It, he revisits his own musical compositions through a minimalist approach, morphing synth, sax, and his voice into a cinematic piece. Showing us the hidden features of their personalities, the former tracks become an atmospheric score that challenges us to recognize the original versions. Like an astronaut stepping foot on unknown grounds, Thomas Azier takes us on this new creative exploration, reminding us of the synths we loved from Tangerine Dream, Angelo Badalamenti, or Brian Eno. It sounds as if Azier is trying to shine a light on the bareness of his melodies, allowing their fragility to come through and the words to come forward.

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What Art Does examines the function of

how art is made by all of us. How it creates

fictional worlds – such as pop songs, detective

communities, opens our worlds, and can

novels, soap operas, shoe tassels and the

transform us. Curious and playful, richly

hidden language of haircuts – and suggests a

illustrated, full of ideas and life, it is an inspiring

new theory of art. It is a chance to understand

call to imagine a different future.

Brian Eno's first new book in twenty-nine years, written in collaboration with Dutch artist and novelist Bette Adriaanse.

Bette A. is an artist, born in Amsterdam. As a child she liked to write

Brian Eno is an artist. He was born in Suffolk and studied art at

Ipswich and Winchester art colleges. After art school, he joined the band Roxy Music and over the next five decades, he continued to make music with others including Talking Heads, Devo, U2, Laurie Anderson, James, David Byrne, Coldplay, David Bowie, Grace Jones, Jon Hassell, Harold Budd and Fred Again.

Through this network, Bette met Brian. They started collaborating on social projects and talking about art. Their conversations led to working together on What Art Does, assembling the ideas Brian has developed during his working life and turning them into a book.

In the vibrant Cairo of the 1980s, young doctor Tarek takes over his father’s medical practice. His demanding job and daily family life leave no room for personal growth. That changes when he meets Ali, a boy from an impoverished neighborhood. Their love puts Tarek’s life in such danger that he is forced to flee to Montreal. During his years of exile, he remains deeply connected to his homeland and the changes taking place there. He has left his family behind in Cairo, and without his knowledge, his departure and his homosexuality have left deep marks on their lives.

What I Know About You (translated into Dutch by Joris Vermeulen) is a remarkable and beautifully written novel about a family overwhelmed by secrets. The story unfolds against the backdrop of Egypt’s recent turbulent history. Éric Chacour (Montreal, 1983) was born to Egyptian parents and has lived in both France and Canada. What I Know About You is his debut novel and a major bestseller in both countries. The book has won multiple literary awards and is being translated into many European languages.

Tash Aw grew up in Kuala

Lumpur and now lives in France.

He has written several novels, two of which were nominated for the Man Booker Prize. His most recent books are We, the Survivors and Strangers on a Pier.

During Crossing Border, he will discuss his latest novel The South (translated into Dutch by Paul van der Lecq).

Young Jay travels with his family to the estate in the south of Malaysia that his late grandfather left behind. The orchards have fallen into disrepair and the fields have dried up, yet his father sends him out to work the land, together with Chuan, the overseer’s son. In the stifling heat, love blossoms between Jay and Chuan, but the legacy of the estate weighs heavily on the entire family. Jay’s mother, Sui Ching, is forced to confront what she has sacrificed for her husband and children. The South is a testament to Tash Aw’s mastery, unfolding as an intimate novel about love, legacy and regret in a rapidly changing world.

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Brian’s visual art has been shown internationally in over 200 venues.

He is involved in activist work, such as the climate charity Earth Percent and HardArt, both of which he co-founded, and Stop The War coalition. Brian often lectures, trying to answer the question: What does art do?

plays and her primary school teachers allowed her to practise them in the gymnasium. She studied Image and Language at the Rietveld Art Academy of Amsterdam. After doing a Master in Creative Writing at Oxford University, she started writing in both English and Dutch and published her novels Rus Like Everyone Else (written by Bette in both English and Dutch: Post voor Rus Ordelman) and What’s Mine (Wat Van Mij Is). Aside from writing novels, Bette creates short stories and drawings and teaches in art schools. In 2019, Bette co-founded TRQSE – a network of artists and scientists who work together on social projects.

Abel Ghekiere is a Belgian multi-

instrumentalist with a sound that comes from merging minimalist jazz, traditional folk and field recordings. The inspiration for his intuitive, stripped-down form of songwriting comes from the likes of Nils Økland, Sufjan Stevens and Caroline.

His second album In de verte, dit uitzicht is a celebration of beauty and sudden bursts of euphoria

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and melancholy, hidden in the distinctive soft and fragile sound of Ghekiere's music.

Working with voice samples and field recordings, voice and improvisation take centre stage.

Sounds from outside are subtly interwoven with instruments, while conversations and memories act as threads running through the compositions.

The music was recorded very

nomadically, in different places, with different people. Most of the parts were written and played

by Abel Ghekiere himself, but with guest contributions by Vitja Pauwels, Nicolas Rombauts, Leo Adamov, & Jan De Vroede, the record breaks open into a soft sound palette. Live, he plays accompanied by Tobias Volckaert (sax), Orlan Ghekiere (drums) and Hendrike Scharmann (violin).

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and Czech this year. Next, the translators will take over and will translate the texts into Dutch, Italian and French, resulting in a total of fifty stories. Multilingual at its core, the project ensures that a close-knit group is formed in which the artists can exchange ideas, while at the same

time the many languages themselves become a subject of discussion.

think about new musical and literary discoveries and about their collaborations.

Crossing Border thus becomes a playground for experimentation: what kind of texts emerge when their creators find themselves in a creative pressure cooker?

What does it mean to share this experience and

During the festival, we’re letting this whole bunch of writers and translators roam freely, processing their experiences in the group and at the festival in their stories, write and

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Lysanne Aarsman

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The Chronicles. Make sure to check our website to read their stories, especially written and translated for the occasion!

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exhaustion with a whole group? Will writing about their double role as artist and audience bridge a gap between people joining the festivals as guests and people performing at the festival?

On the last evening, there will be a joint reading with all participants of

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The Chronicles is our residency programme for young Dutch and international writers and translators. Luckily for us, this residency involves a lot of work: during the project, the authors will write several stories in their mother tongue, including Dutch, Bulgarian, Spanish

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Aida González Rossi

Veerle De Caestecker & Marie Jadot Veerle De Caestecker (1998) is a writer, thinker and self-proclaimed

façade gardener. In the Slow Writing Lab 2024, she worked on a polyphonic story about ecological mourning. She loves theatre, poetry and words she picks up from the street. Throughout her work, she wonders how we can learn to listen to people, animals and things that are generally less well listened to today. During the festival, her work will be translated into French by Marie Jadot.

Marie Jadot (1995) studied Germanic Languages and Literatures at

UNamur, KU Leuven and ULiège, where she is currently finalising a PhD on the musical dimension in contemporary Dutch war literature.

As a Teaching Assistant in Dutch Studies she uses teaching methods ranging from lectures to theatre evenings and from tongue twisters to language walks. She has (co-)organised workshops on literary translation with, among others, Anna Enquist, Ronelda S. Kamfer, Antjie Krog, Georges Lory and Alfred Schaffer. As part of a FrenchItalian project with Franco Paris, she recently translated a selection of poems by the Dutch author and artist Armando. During the festival, she will work with Veerle’s stories.

Marek Torčík & Lysanne Aarsman Marek Torčík (1993) is a poet, novelist, and journalist from Přerov,

now based in Prague. His poetry collection Rhizomy was published in 2016. Memory Burn (2023), his debut novel, has received critical acclaim – Magnesia Litera, Best Novel (2024), the Jiří Orten Prize (2024) and the Susanna Roth Award (2024). The book is translated in 27 languages. Irma Pieper’s translation into Dutch, Brandend geheugen, will be published this year at De Arbeiderspers. During the festival, Marek’s stories will be translated into Dutch by Lysanne Aarsman.

Lysanne Aarsman is a literary translator who specializes in

translating from Czech into Dutch. She has a bachelor's degree in

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Joanna Elmy

Slavic Studies and a master's degree in Translation Studies, both from the University of Amsterdam. She’s currently participating in the third cycle of CELA, a talent development project for the new generation of European literary voices, and taking a professionalisation course through the ELV (expertise centre for literary translation). In addition to translating, she works in the library. During the festival, she will translate Marek’s stories into Dutch.

Jan Wester & Daniela Gentile Jan Wester (1995) is a writer and sculptor. He studied philosophy at the University of Amsterdam and Image and Language at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. His visual artwork was featured at LekArt 2021 and OBJECT Rotterdam. His debut novel Koeman recently got published at Uitgeverij Pluim. During the festival, his work will be translated into Italian by Daniela Gentile.

Daniela Gentile studied Translation and Conference Interpreting from

English, German and Dutch into Italian at the University of Trieste.

She has been based in the Nuremberg metropolitan region in Germany for nearly a decade, where she built her career as a translator and interpreter.

Her first literary translations were Joke van Leeuwen’s children's philosophy book Dát bedoel ik, zei de zalm and Frenk Meeuwsen’s graphic novel Zen zonder meester, to be published by the end of 2025.

During the festival, she’ll translate Jan’s stories into Italian.

Aida González Rossi & Sanne van den Bosch Aida González Rossi (Tenerife, 1995) is a writer and journalist

specializing in Gender Studies. She has published the poetry collections Deseo y la tierra (Cartonera Island, 2018) and Pueblo yo (Libero Editorial, 2020), as well as the novel Leche condensada (Caballo de Troya, 2023).

Kieran Van Overwaele

She has also contributed to many anthologies such as Esto es un cuerpo.

Culo (2023), Flores y ruina (2024), and (h)amor bi(y)bollo (2025). She is a columnist for El Día and La Provincia. In 2025, she is in charge of Merendero, the Young Writers’ Lab at La Casa Encendida. During the festival, her work will be translated into Dutch by Sanne van den Bosch.

Sanne van den Bosch is a Spanish and English translator. After having

studied History in Leiden and living in Madrid for a couple of months to immerse herself into the Spanish language and culture, she went for her master’s degree in Literary Translation at Utrecht University. She has translated books by Javier Castillo and articles for National Geographic Historia and she also works as a freelance editor for several publishers, which she finds very useful when translating (but also the other way around), and as a bookseller at Boekhandel Veenendaal in Amersfoort.

For Crossing Border, she will translate Aida’s stories into Dutch.

Joanna Elmy & Kieran Van Overwaele Joanna Elmy is a Bulgarian-born writer and journalist, named one

of Bulgaria’s most prominent young literary voices. Her debut novel, Born of Guilt, is being translated into over fifteen languages, including Dutch: Schuldig geboren will be published this year at De Bezige Bij, translated by Hellen Kooijman.

Joanna is a columnist for Deutsche Welle and her literary criticism and essays have appeared in papers like The Literary Journal, VIJ Magazine and Capital Weekly. She lives between the US and Bulgaria, where she is the founder of a project aiming to modernize the Bulgarian literary canon and to improve access to literature and literary knowledge.

During the festival, her work will be translated by Kieran Van Overwaele.

Kieran Van Overwaele (2001) is a Slavicist and literary translator.

He graduated in East European Languages and Cultures at Ghent University, where he discovered his love for literary translation. He translated various Bulgarian literary texts in collaboration with Hellen Kooijman, and in 2023 he was a guest at the House for Literature and Translation in Sofia.

Besides his work with Bulgarian literature, Kieran dabbles in writing poetry and has also translated Russian literature and literary texts from the former Yugoslavia. During the festival, he will translate Joanna’s stories into Dutch.

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Budgie Paul Gorman Budgie was born as Peter Edward Clarke in 1957 in the Northwest of

England and studied Fine Art before taking a sabbatical in 1977 to join a band or two. Budgie is known internationally for his unique style of drumming on The Slits' debut album Cut (1979), and as writer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist, with both Siouxsie And The Banshees and The Creatures. He lives in Berlin, Germany with his wife, two children, three cats, and a Giant Schnauzer. At the festival, Budgie will present his recently published memoir The Absence: Memoirs of a Banshee Drummer.

Growing up in working class St Helens in the 1960s, Peter Clarke lost his mum as a young boy and it’s her ‘absence’ that haunts the pages of this book. Disenchanted with art school in Liverpool, Peter became Budgie and befriended the likes of Jayne Casey, Holly Johnson, Pete Burns, Bill Drummond and other luminaries of the legendary Eric’s Club, before taking off for London and the big city heat of punk. The beating heart of this painfully honest and frank account of a life often sabotaged by substance abuse and alcohol is his long-term position as Siouxsie and The Banshees’ drummer and co-writer alongside ex-lover Siouxsie Sioux. For the first time the story of this most exalted and mysterious of bands has been told by one who survived inside the belly of the beast.

Paul Gorman is a writer, curator and cultural commentator. His books

include Totally Wired: The Rise & Fall Of The Music Press, The Look: Adventures in Rock & Pop Fashion, Straight with Boy George and Nine Lives with Goldie. At Crossing Border, he will talk about his new book Granny Takes a Trip.

Granny Takes A Trip was more than just a shop and a fashion brand; it was the original rock and roll clothes boutique, the template for all that followed. What started as an odd retail venture/art installation in a depressed part of London known as World's End, became an international byword for glam decadence in Manhattan and Hollywood, combining flamboyant style and all manner of countercultural activity to attract everyone from Pattie Boyd, Marianne Faithfull and Anita Pallenberg to Elton John, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart, The Beatles, and Lou Reed.

Michel Nieva (Argentina) was born in 1988. He has published several novels, poetry collections and essays, lives in New York and teaches Latin American literature at NYU. Dengue Boy is his first novel to be translated into English (by Rahul Bery).

Dengue Boy draws on manga, body horror, and gaucho-punk science fiction to tell a delirious, frenetic, singular story about the ravages of capitalism and what hope might exist, if any, for revenge and rebirth. After the last Antarctic icecaps melt, landscapes are radically transformed and diseases mutate and spread with unprecedented speed. Then, there’s “virofinance” exchange – a market for corporations to profit from pandemics and global suffering. It’s in this grim near future of 2272, where words such as “winter” and “cold” have no meaning, the Dengue Child grows.

The young Algerian woman Aube did not live through the war of independence – but she is not allowed to forget it. The civil war of the 1990s, which she did experience, she is expected to forget. Yet the trauma of that war is etched into her body, damaged vocal cords have left her unable to speak. She can only tell her story to her unborn daughter. But can you give life when yours was nearly taken away? In a country where laws exist to punish anyone who speaks of the civil war, Aube decides to return to her native village – where it all began, and where the dead might finally give her an answer.

Beautifully illustrated with archival images of the shop and the clothes themselves, this book concludes with a never-seen-before 48-page tour through the Rolling Stones' wild wardrobe of sartorial delights tailored and sold in the shop.

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Kamel Daoud (Algeria) is a journalist for Le Quotidien d’Oran, one of Algeria’s leading Frenchlanguage newspapers. His articles are published worldwide, including in Le Monde and The New York Times.

Houris (translated into Dutch

by Jan Pieter van der Sterre and Reintje Ghoos) is his most recent novel and won the prestigious French Prix Goncourt in 2024.

Eduardo Halfon (Guatemala)

was born in 1971 and currently lives in Berlin. He has published eighteen books, and his work has been translated into more than fifteen languages. In 2018, he received the National Prize for Literature of Guatemala.

His new book Tarantula (translated into Dutch by Marijke Arijs)

Jordan Thomas (US) is an

anthropologist and former Los Padres hotshot wildland firefighter. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and The Drift. In his first book When It All Burns (translated into Dutch by Hans Kloos), he recounts a single, brutal sixmonth fire season with the Los

Padres Hotshots – the special forces of America’s firefighters.

Thomas viscerally renders his crew’s attempts to battle flames that are often too destructive to contain. He uncovers the cultural history of megafires, revealing how humanity’s symbiotic relationship with wildfire became a war – and what can be done to change it back.

Thomas weaves ecology and the history of Indigenous peoples’ oppression, federal forestry, and the growth of the fire industrial complex into a riveting narrative about a new phase in the climate crisis.

It’s an immersive story of community in the most perilous of circumstances, told with humor, humility, and affection.

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weaves together past and present, reality and fiction, as it tells the story of two young brothers in 1984 who return to Guatemala to attend a youth camp for Jewish children in a forest on the high plains. Their parents, exiled to the United States, have sent them there so they won’t forget their roots. One morning, the camp reveals itself to be a far more sinister place than the children had imagined – each of them will have to find their own way to survive. The mystery of this childhood episode only unravels many years later, through chance encounters. One of them in Berlin with a former head instructor from the camp – a man who once carried a snake in his pocket and a giant tarantula on his arm.

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Yasmin Zaher is a Palestinian

After serving as Dichter des Vaderlands of Belgium (a role akin to a national Poet Laureate), Els Moors (1976) finally presents a new collection titled Voer voor struikrovers. Like a tumbleweed driven by destiny, she writes with minimal poetic convention and maximal musical force. A promise of great things to come.

journalist and writer born in Jerusalem. Her first novel The Coin is the account of a young woman’s unraveling as she teaches at a New York City middle school, gets caught up in a scheme reselling Birkin bags, and strives to gain control over her body and mind.

Her ideal self and the ideal life remain just out of reach: her inheritance is inaccessible, her homeland exists only in her memory, and her attempt to thrive in America seems doomed from the start. In an attempt to regain control, she becomes preoccupied with purity, cleanliness, and self-image, all while drawing her students into her obsessions. In an unforgettable denouement, her childhood memories converge with her material and existential statelessness, and the narrator unravels spectacularly.

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At its heart lies Border Crossing, an installation

by Jan De Vroede & Mashid

Rotkat and VONK & Zonen invite Vieze Meisje to take the stage alongside kindred spirits. Expect playful music, sharp spoken word, and evocative performances by critical connector Maxime

Garcia Diaz, thorough Dadaist Sad Banana and uncompromising eclecticist Vieze Meisje.

Closing the evening, Rotkat brings in Antwerp band De Kloe, known for their high-energy live shows

packed with driving riffs and pulsing drums: “When five entirely different bands seem to be playing at the same time, and it magically works.”

A tiny glimpse of what they have in store for you:

De Kloe

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Mohadjerin as Cebil: a stimulating video and sound work that merges imagery, photography, and animation with audio, creating a poetic, cosmic universe.

For Crossing Border 2025, Cebil, Rotkat and VONK & Zonen take over Bar Lokal with a unique programme.

Sad Banana tries to see the

Vieze Meisje is the musical

Maxime Garcia Diaz (1993) studied Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam. In 2019, she won the Dutch Poetry Slam Championship and was selected for deBuren’s Paris residency.

She made her debut with the poetry collection Het is warm in de hivemind (2021), published

by De Bezige Bij, which was awarded the C. Buddingh’ Prize.

In October, her new poetry collections will be published: Het netwerk moet gebouwd worden / The Network Must Be Built (in Dutch and English).

incarnation of performance artist Maya Mertens. In 2019, she founded the Vieze Cirkel, a cult that guarantees exclusivity for everyone and creates random bonds in a world endlessly spinning in circles.

That same year, she met producer Azertyklavierwerke.

In October 2025, they will release their debut album CUT COPY GUT on Rotkat Records.

Exclusively for Crossing Border, they’re leaving the computer at home and going back to basics: Piano & A Microphone 2025.

there in her solo visual art.

Unpredictability is embedded in the duo’s diverse output – roles are swapped, improv takes over, no two sets are ever the same.

The visuals are videocollages combining moving image, photo and animation, allowing various interpretations. The duo takes you on a journey through movement, transition and unexpected compositions.

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Jan De Vroede weaves homemade instruments, old tape loops, broken synths, dusty beat boxes and the occasional doom guitar squall into a tapestry that nestles itself firmly around the solitary voice of Mashid Mohadjerin, whose captivating parlando dictates attention to both the visuals and the topics of social injustice, resilience and resistance that are prominently

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Somewhere between pure improv, organised chaos, minimal composition, astonishment and a dose of DIY aesthetics lies the world of Cebil.

It’s a poetic & cosmic universe, exploring “discreet music” whilst wandering on the edges of the Cat People soundtrack and Brian Eno’s more experimental output, carried by visuals into a living installation of sorts.

world through the eyes of a banana. Through inconsistent musings, they craft an existential fruit salad in musical form – SadDada-Punk-Rap. Sad B performs in three languages and blends genres that shift from Dadaist punk to sharp, juicy rap verses to French chanson. Their shows feature a DIY banana organ and deconstructed drums. Lyrics swinging between grandiose declarations and panic attacks, vulnerability and kitsch, politics and pastiche. Sad! Sad Banana nurtures this bittersweet melancholy across words, music, and visuals.

Antjie Krog is one of South Africa’s most celebrated authors. At the age

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At the festival, Antjie Krog will discuss her debut novel Blood’s Inner Rhyme (translated into Dutch by Robert Dorsman). It tells the story of the relationship between mother and daughter and is believed to be Krog’s most personal and at the same time most universal book to date.

More deeply than ever, Krog feels connected to the woman who gave her life, and to her roots. Nevertheless, mother and daughter, both writers, sometimes seem as different as night and day.

With stylistic precision, Six sketches a tender portrait of people poised at the fragile threshold between life and death.

In het wit is an intimate novel that delicately engages with pressing themes such as dementia and motherhood.

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In his moving new novel In het wit, Roderik Six (1979) follows young women as they struggle with timeless dilemmas.

In touching exchanges of letters, the two challenge each other to understand one another’s circumstances and worlds.

And so it becomes clear that the history of their motherland may well be the most defining factor in their lives.

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of seventeen, she made her debut with the poetry collection Daughter of Jephthah, the beginning of a versatile and much-awarded body of work. Her perspective on and portrayal of South Africa and femininity resonates with audiences around the world.

Lotte Dodion (1987) is a poet,

performer, and poetry evangelist.

Even when she is not writing or on stage, she brings poetry and a sense of wonder into the fabric of everyday life.

A decade after her debut collection Kanonnenvlees, she returned this summer with Verzachtende omstandigheden, a book that places hope at its heart.

And isn’t that precisely what we all need in these times?

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Born in Hamburg, Germany to Turkish parents, Derya Yıldırım grew up influenced by her family’s Anatolian background and the myriads of cultures in the city. Derya’s musical roots started at home playing folk music with family members. Her father pushed her to learn various instruments, beginning with the bağlama, a seven stringed Turkish lute. Then she picked up the guitar, piano, and saxophone.

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Although she is a multi-instrumentalist, Derya always felt drawn to the sound of the bağlama – “there’s just something very magical about it”. With her band Grup Şimşek’s forthcoming album Yarın Yoksa, which translates to “If There’s No Tomorrow”, Derya continues her journey revitalizing Anatolian folk music and instrumentation by infusing timeless melodies with a modern psychedelic flair.

Ten years ago, while participating in a community theater project, Derya met French musicians Graham Mushnik and Antonin Voyant from Catapulte Records and formed the band Grup Şimşek with Helen Wells, a drummer from Cape Town, South Africa joining in 2021. While the band is truly international, they eschew the term ‘world music’, preferring instead ‘outernational’ which they say suggests a sound that’s more inclusive or

“beyond borders.” DY&GS embody what defines Anatolian folk music – “You need a groove and a melody, and everything around it is free.” It’s this ethos that guides the band’s songwriting and the way they take on Anatolian folk standards.

“I believe the melodies shouldn't be changed because we are responsible to preserve music in the correct way. Our versions respect the roots. It’s the same lyrics and melody, but it has a different soul maybe.” While it’s easy to think of folk music as a music of the past, she insists it’s just as important today. “Some of these poems were written hundreds of years ago but they’re still relevant. This music is so important because it remains the voice of the people, the minority, and the oppressed.”

After self-producing multiple albums, they signed with New York’s Big Crown Records in 2024 and teamed up with Grammy winning producer Leon Michels (El Michels Affair) for Yarın Yoksa. The new album embodies their balance of preservation and innovation across nine original compositions and three traditional folk songs. It is a record that will enchant any listener regardless of language barrier with Derya’s passion and authenticity front and center and music too moving to deny. Yarın Yoksa is sure to captivate the hearts and minds of all those who hear it, and just wait till you experience them playing it live ...

Otoniya J. Okot Bitek (Canada/Uganda) is a writer mostly known for

her award-winning poetry. She teaches Black Creativity at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

In We, the kindling, her debut novel, the author weaves together the lives of three women in their late twenties: Miriam, Helen, and Maggie, who all carry the physical and emotional weight of their teenage years, when they were trained as child soldiers in Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army.

In lyrical yet unflinching prose, Otoniya J. Okot Bitek brings together their past and present: the rhythm of life before the war, the circumstances of their abduction, and the perilous journey home.

Refusing to sensationalize cruelty and tragedy, the novel highlights strength, courage, and the unbreakable bonds between those who survive instead. Translation into Dutch: Robert Dorsman.

In 2025, Toronto-based Tamara Lindeman and her project The

Weather Station returned with a new album, Humanhood. It was

written during one of the most difficult periods of Lindeman’s life and rendered with a rock band with improvisational chops just as she began to recover by reckoning with a complicated truth: Sometimes, life simply tries to dismantle us, no matter how good everything may seem, and we must accept that in order to survive.

Working through this crisis, Lindeman wrote from within the confusion of the experience to create the songs that would ultimately become Humanhood, a narrative album that, listened to front to back, transcribes the journey from dissociation back towards connection.

And as it turns out, Humanhood might just be the most arresting album Lindeman has ever made as The Weather Station.

Out of thin air, at the beginning of 2023, De Toegift suddenly emerges.

Starting in Zeeland, the melancholic sounds of their debut album blow across the mainland of the Netherlands and Belgium with gale force winds. From the very first notes, the band is praised in the press; according to 3voor12, De Toegift delivered the best show at Noorderslag 2023, and their debut album received a five-star review in Trouw.

With distinctive lyrics and a fresh blend of indie, folk, and jazz, De Toegift is a welcome addition to the current wave of Dutch-language artists.

© DANIQUE VAN KESTEREN

A brotherly collection, a soft punch to the gut. No sentimentality. No polished phrases. Just raw beauty: love, loss, humor, and a flood of images, drifting between post-punk and poetry.

With Bambi & The Big Fuck-Up, the Staes brothers open up a piece of their souls. Through paper, pixels and QR codes.

Jef Staes (1967–2024) is no longer with us. As a curator, he was the one who first brought the festival to its Belgian home at Arenberg.

This collection, promised to each other by Piet, Jef, and Filip in 2024, now returns there for its launch.

© SEASMIN TAYLOR

© MARCO DELOGU

Zwarte september tells the story of twelve-year-old Gigio Bellandi during the summer of 1972, on the northwestern coast of Tuscany. He discovers music, books, and love, but his innocence is brutally shattered by a tragic event. Around Gigio, victims and perpetrators blend into unforgettable Veronesi characters: his father, the water rat; his mother, the lioness; his brave little sister; and the two most crucial figures in his sudden coming-of-age: his mysterious uncle Giotti, and Astel Raimondi, the girl with braids “black as black onyx”, who leaves the indelible mark of love on him.

Half a century later, Gigio reflects on his life. In Black September, Sandro Veronesi captures, like only he can, the power and loss of love, and the human capacity to overcome grief and move forward. But Zwarte september is also a novel about the evocative power of words (mouflon mouflon mouflon mouflon mouflon) and the seductive, life-saving force of language. Zwarte september is Sandro Veronesi at the height of his powers. The book has been translated into Dutch by Welmoet Hillen.

© BRENDAN GEORGE KO

Sandro Veronesi (Italy) became a beloved literary figure and bestselling author worldwide with novels such as The Force of the Past, Quiet Chaos and The Hummingbird. Over the years, he has won several major awards.

He is one of only two writers to have won the Premio Strega, Italy’s most prestigious literary prize, twice.

Now joined by a violinist and flutist, De Toegift continues to experiment, which is also evident on their remix EP De vormen voelen vreemd, for which the band collaborated with artists such as Lucky Fonz III and gladde paling.

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