Worlds Literature Festival 2015

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

2015

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL 2015

CONTENTS Welcome 4 Schedule 6 National Centre for Writing

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City of Literature

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Enjoying Norwich

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Participants 14 Staff 28 Information 30

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WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

WELCOME TO WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL 2015 Welcome to Norwich, England’s UNESCO City of Literature.

We are very much looking forward to hosting you in our city.

Worlds is the UK’s premier international literary Salon, hosted by Writers’ Centre Norwich (WCN) in June each year. In a unique residential week, novelists, poets, memoirists, biographers, critics, teachers and translators from the UK and around the world gather for an extended conversation over four days about writing as an art, craft and profession. Alongside this, a public events programme enables audiences in Norwich to engage with outstanding contemporary literature.

THE SALON At the heart of Worlds is the private Salon, a space created and fed by the writers who take part and driven by a series of provocations, conversations and questions. While we have some sense of the shape of the discussion over the four days, we don’t want to be too prescriptive about where the debate and the group might take us. We entrust that decision to you, the participants.

THE THEME: REPUTATION The theme for this year is “Reputation”.The word can evoke uneasy feelings about literary rivalry and biased judgements.

It also provokes questions about how literary reputations are made and unmade. Pascale Casanova has analysed the processes that confer literary reputation in her book, The World Republic of Letters: they are contingent on a writer becoming “recognised” by certain people (editors, agents, critics) in a certain place or places (Paris, New York, London) and in certain languages (English, Spanish, French).These can find a concentrated expression in the award of literary prizes, just as such awards, in turn, stimulate debates about why prizes are awarded wrongly.Taken together, these circumstances delineate some awkward boundaries between literary authorship and celebrity culture, between who occupies prominent positions in a notional literary establishment and who doesn’t, between recognition in one culture and absence in another.

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One question we want to explore is how much these kinds of concern with literary reputation oppress or encourage the work of writing literature. Another is whether the very idea of literary reputation is undergoing a significant mutation, especially in the disconnection in the work of some authors of the idea of literary achievement from recognition on either a national or international stage.

Is there a change in the balance of power in The World Republic of Letters that will see Calcutta and Beijing emerge as significant places where global literary reputations are conferred? Or is there something more subtle emerging, processes that will recast the very idea of a World Republic of Letters into something less monolithic, less dominated by the single genre of the novel, and more linguistically and culturally various in its understanding of what is worth reading?

How is reputation agreed, conferred, measured? How does the conversation between a present author, the past authorities and their real or imagined franchises differ from calfskin to kindle? Are we jettisoning (or pretending to jettison) our relationships with the ancestors in the slipstream of digital technologies? Are the new routes to publication spawning readers who (in Tocqueville’s words) “do not expect to find a work of literature, but a spectacle”?

From the notion of a benevolent, canonising Tradition on one hand – key points of contestation being its intersections with linguistic and identity politics – to the post-MFA, youth-obsessed publishing industry on the other, we will debate the rise and fall of literary reputation and literary reputations alike.

We hope that the conversations this year turn out to be productive and enjoyable for you.

Jon Cook, Professor of Literature, University of East Anglia Chris Gribble, Chief Executive, Writers’ Centre Norwich Jon Morley, Programme Director, Writers’ Centre Norwich

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Audience, Worlds Literature Festival 2014 Photo: Martin Figura

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WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

SCHEDULE

MONDAY

TUESDAY 10am | Cathedral Hostry INTRODUCTIONS

11.30am | Cathedral Hostry READINGS

by Mamta Sagar and Jack Wang 12 -1pm LUNCH 1- 4pm | Cathedral Hostry SALON DAY ONE: PROVOCATIONS

by Chris Bigsby and Lucy Hughes-Hallett

4pm BREAK 4.30pm | Cathedral Hostry READINGS

by Cathy Cole and C. J. Driver

6pm | The Book Hive READINGS

by Lauren K Alleyne, James Shea and George Szirtes 7pm | Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, UEA WELCOME DINNER & VISIT TO THE FRANCIS BACON AND THE MASTERS EXHIBITION

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8pm | The Wine Cellar DINNER

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WEDNESDAY

THURSDAY

FRIDAY

10am | Dragon Hall TRANSLATOR / TRANSLATED Readings and discussion with Geir Gulliksen and Deborah Dawkin, Han Kang and Deborah Smith, Sigitas Parulskis and Romas Kinka

10am | Dragon Hall TOUR OF DRAGON HALL

11am | Cathedral Hostry READINGS

by Krys Lee, Marion Molteno and Kyoko Yoshida 11.30am | Dragon Hall READINGS

by Ana Clavel and Alípio Correia de Franca Neto 12-1pm LUNCH

12 -1pm LUNCH

12 -1pm LUNCH

1- 4pm | Cathedral Hostry SALON DAY TWO: PROVOCATIONS

by Vesna Goldsworthy and D. J. Taylor

1- 4pm | Dragon Hall SALON DAY THREE: PROVOCATIONS

by Elif Shafak and Sigitas Parulskis

1- 4pm | Dragon Hall SALON DAY FOUR: PROVOCATIONS

by Mamta Sagar and David Graham, and Recapitulation by George Szirtes

4pm BREAK

4pm BREAK

4pm BREAK

4.30pm | Cathedral Hostry READINGS

by Liz Berry and D.W. Wilson

4.30pm | Dragon Hall READINGS

by Anna Funder and Vesna Goldsworthy

4.30pm | Dragon Hall READINGS

by Kirsty Gunn, Susan Barker and Dan Richards

5.30pm FREE TIME

5.30pm FREE TIME

6pm | Cathedral Hostry READINGS

by Amit Chaudhuri, Lucy Hughes-Hallett and Elif Shafak 7pm | Café Bar Marzano UEA LIVE! featuring Dennison Smith 8pm | Tatlers DINNER

8pm | The Last Wine Bar FAREWELL DINNER 9pm | East 26 DINNER

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A NATIONAL CENTRE FOR WRITING AT DRAGON HALL Writers’ Centre Norwich is planning an ambitious period of growth and expansion over the next two years. We have recently moved to our new home, the Grade 1 listed Dragon Hall, and intend to open this as a specialist venue for literature – the National Centre for Writing – in 2017. It will be a space where the best in world literature is easily available to audiences and readers, where emerging talent is nurtured and celebrated, and which benefits its local communities through participatory programmes and innovative education projects.

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The National Centre for Writing’s vision is a joined-up and well resourced support network for creative writing, literature and literary translation in the UK; its purpose is to promote a culture where the literary arts can thrive.

Our communications team will be at large throughout Worlds, hoping to talk to our guests about these plans and perhaps to interview some of you. We are very grateful for any assistance you can offer during this exciting time for Writers’ Centre.

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A National Centre for Writing at Dragon Hall Photos: Dave Guttridge

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UNESCO CITY OF LITERATURE In 2012, Norwich consolidated its position as England’s foremost literary city by becoming the country’s first UNESCO City of Literature, joining an elite international network that now includes Edinburgh, Melbourne, Iowa City, Dublin, Reykjavik, Kraków, Heidelberg, Dunedin, Granada and Prague.

Norwich cityscape Photo: Martin Figura

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A CITY OF LITERATURE Norwich has been a literary city for over 900 years: a place of ideas where the power of words has changed lives, promulgated parliamentary democracy, fomented revolution, fought for the abolition of slavery and transformed the literary arts.Today, it remains the regional centre for publishing and is home to five per cent of the UK’s independent publishing sector. People in Norwich spend more per capita on culture than anywhere else in the UK, and Norwich remains a destination for poets, novelists, biographers, playwrights, translators, editors, literary critics, social critics, historians, environmentalists and philosophers.

It is a place for writers as agents of change.

A CITY OF FIRSTS The first book written by a woman in the English language came from the pen of Julian of Norwich in 1395, when a series of visions led her to compose Revelations of Divine Love – an extraordinary contemplation of universal love and hope in a time of plague, religious schism, uprisings and war. In the sixteenth century, the first poem in blank verse was written here by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. The first English provincial library (1608) and newspaper (1701) followed, and Norwich was also the first place to implement the Public Library Act of 1850. More recently, in 1970, Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson founded the UK’s first Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia (UEA); Ian McEwan was the first graduate. In 2006, Norwich became the first (and still is the only) UK city to join the International Cities of Refuge Network, which was formed to promote free speech and support imperilled writers.

A CITY OF LIBRARIES The Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library, housed in the magnificent Forum in the heart of Norwich, has been the most-visited public library in the UK for the past seven years and lends more items than any other in the country. Across the city, the Cathedral Library is home to more than 20,000 books (some dating back to the fifteenth century), while the John Innes Centre hosts a remarkable collection of natural history and rare books.

A CITY OF INDEPENDENT BOOKSHOPS AND PUBLISHERS The Jarrold family arrived in the East of England in the seventeenth century, bringing with them the art of printing and bookbinding.

They published Anna Sewell’s global bestseller Black Beauty in 1877, and today the Jarrolds department store contains one of the foremost independent bookshops in the UK. Norwich’s newest addition, The Book Hive, opened in 2009 to national praise and in 2011 was named

by The Telegraph as the Best Small Independent Bookshop in Britain.

A CITY FOR WRITERS AND READERS Writers’ Centre Norwich provides professional development for writers through workshops, courses, networking and competitions, reaches thousands of children through innovative school programmes, connects with readers through a successful summer reading campaign, and hosts a series of high profile events throughout the year.

The Worlds international gathering of writers is held each June and offers a uniquely writerfocused forum for discussion and debate about writing and literature from a writer’s perspective.

A CITY OF WRITERS Following a successful start with Ian McEwan, the Creative Writing MA at UEA has established itself as the foremost course of its kind in the UK and a global hub for national and international literature. Graduates include three Booker Prize winners (Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro and Anne Enright), as well as a number of other major prize-winners including Tracy Chevalier, Joe Dunthorne and Naomi Alderman. The British Centre for Literary Translation at UEA, founded by the renowned author W.G. Sebald, is Britain’s leading centre for the development, promotion and support of literary translation from and into many languages.

A CITY OF INDEPENDENT MINDS Writers from Norwich have, quite literally, changed the world. Born just south of Norwich, Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense, a treatise that influenced the course of the American Revolution, and his Rights of Man

is one of the most widely read books of all time. Harriet Martineau, another Radical and campaigning journalist, wrote promoting the causes of gender and racial equality, personal responsibility, fair economics and evidencebased science. Celebrated polymath Thomas Browne, prison reformer Elizabeth Fry and, more recently, humourist Stephen Fry have all called Norwich their home.

A CITY OF REFUGE Writers’ Centre Norwich established Norwich as the UK’s first City of Refuge for threatened writers, and was a founding member of the International Cities of Refuge Network (ICORN).

Norwich was also a founding member of the Shahrazad project, which brought together six Cities of Refuge to open up a free space for writers from all over the world to connect and tell their stories.

A CITY OF PERFORMANCE Norwich is the focal point for a thriving live literature scene, and is home to some of the most vibrant and creative performance poets in the UK. Aisle 16 was formed by a group of students at UEA in 2000 and has delighted audiences ever since, playing a central role in the development and popularity of live literature at festivals over the past decade. Founding member Luke Wright also set up Nasty Little Press in 2009, dedicated to publishing poetry from the UK’s best loved live poets – including Molly Naylor, Martin Figura, Tim Clare, Hannah Walker and John Osborne, all Norwich residents.

A CITY OF FESTIVALS Norwich is home to the oldest city arts festival in the country, the internationally renowned Norfolk and Norwich Festival. At UEA, the International Literary Festival regularly plays to packed houses of up to 500. Within an hour of Norwich are a multitude of other literature festivals, including the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, Poetry-next-the-Sea and Cambridge Wordfest, and new initiatives such as the “Noirwich” Crime Writing Festival, the Young Norfolk Arts Festival and the Norfolk Festival of Nature continue to grow and thrive.

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WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

ENJOYING NORWICH The following is a guide to some of our favourite places in Norwich.

1 Walk the Cathedral grounds and surrounding streets, and visit the Cathedral. The Cathedral and its grounds cover a large area in the centre of Norwich and all parts can be walked for free.

Particularly look out for Pulls Ferry, the Old Hospital (a stunning building with an ancient chained library), The Adam and Eve pub (the oldest in Norwich, dating back to the 12th century) and, if you have time, stop in at the Cathedral as well.

5 Take a trip out into Norfolk. Great Yarmouth has beaches, a pier, mini golf, Segway racing, greyhounds, fish and chips, hot fresh donuts and lots more besides. Buses and trains to Yarmouth are frequent and reasonably priced, and a journey should take no more than 45 minutes.

The North Norfolk countryside and coastline offer pretty towns such as Cromer, Holt and Wells-next-the-Sea with picture postcard views, local cuisine, hiking, beaches and water sports.

2 Explore the shops in The Lanes and the Market. There has been a market on that site since Saxon times and it is now the largest Monday-to-Saturday open market in the country: over 190 stalls selling just about anything you could want. Nearby, Norwich Lanes (roughly the streets behind the Tesco Metro) boast a range of fabulous shops including independent clothing, jewellery and book retailers.

6 Get tea / coffee / hot chocolate and cake in the Britons Arms, a charming cafe on Elm Hill (one of the oldest roads in England).The Britons Arms was used in the film Stardust and, as well as delicious cakes, boasts a delightful secluded garden.

3 Mousehold Heath offers the country-side on your doorstep; you can lose yourself in forest and rolling hills. There is also an 18-hole Pitch and Putt course hidden away.

4 The Plantation Gardens is a hidden gem.

Located just behind the Catholic Cathedral, it is a beautiful planned Victorian gardens that feels a little bit like stepping into a forgotten city. Free to enter, though donations requested.

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7 Norwich Castle offers an intriguing mix of local history museum, art gallery (featuring lots of Norfolk School watercolours), with a bit of Victorian taxidermy and Ancient Egyptian history thrown in for good measure. Interesting to climb to the top and look out over Norwich, and descend into the dungeons below.

Sometimes you can try on armoury.

8 Strangers Hall on Charing Cross is one of Norwich's oldest and most fascinating buildings, dating back to 1320. Stroll through a maze of interlinked rooms enriched with textiles and period objects, bringing the days of the Tudors and Stuarts vividly to life.

9 FRANK’S BAR 19 Bedford Street, NR2 1AR A cafe bar in the centre of Norwich with table service. Good breakfasts, reasonable food served all day. Popular artsy venue where films are shown on Sunday afternoons.

10 THE PLAYHOUSE BAR 42-58 St. Georges Street, NR3 1AB A cool and popular bar that is part of an independent theatre. Lovely beer garden overlooking the River Wensum, and a good range of drinks. Late night opening and DJs. A quieter room is also available.

11 THE BICYCLE SHOP 17 St. Benedicts Street, NR2 4PE A quirky independent cafe / bar that serves food and drinks in comfortable surroundings.

12 TAKE FIVE 17 Tombland, NR3 1HF Just across the road from your hotel, this bustling tavern offers food, drinks and occasional live literature events from Monday to Saturday.

13 NORWICH TOURIST INFORMATION CENTRE The Forum, Millennium Plain, 01603 213999 For more ideas and listings, see: www.visitnorwich.co.uk or www.visitnorfolk.co.uk

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PARTICIPANTS

The Salon at Worlds 2014 Photo: by Martin Figura

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LAUREN K. ALLEYNE is the author of Difficult Fruit (Peepal Tree Press, 2014). She holds an MFA in Poetry from Cornell University, and an MA in English from Iowa State University.

She teaches at the University of Dubuque in Iowa, and is currently the Picador Guest Professor of Literature at the University of Leipzig in Germany.

SUSAN BARKER grew up in east London.

She is the author of the novels Sayonara Bar (2005) and The Orientalist and the Ghost (2008), both published by Doubleday and longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her third novel The Incarnations (Doubleday UK, 2014, Simon and Schuster US, August 2015) is set in contemporary Beijing and interwoven with tales from other historical eras. While writing The Incarnations she spent several years living in Beijing, researching modern and imperial China.

She is now based in London. @SusanKBarker

LIZ BERRY was born in the Black Country and now lives in Birmingham. Her debut collection, Black Country (Chatto & Windus, 2014), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2014. @MissLizBerry

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CHRISTOPHER BIGSBY is an academic, novelist, biographer and broadcaster. For 18 years he chaired the British Council’s Cambridge Seminar and for 21 years the Arthur Miller Centre International Literary Festival at UEA (four volumes of interviews based on this series have been published). At UEA he is in charge of international developments in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Arts.

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AMIT CHAUDHURI is a novelist, critic, and musician. His latest novel is Odysseus Abroad. Among the prizes he has won are the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Encore Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Sahitya Akademi Prize, and the Infosys Prize for outstanding contribution to literary studies.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of East Anglia. @AmitChaudhuri

ANA CLAVEL was born in Mexico City in 1961 and studied literature at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She is a writer who transgresses literary convention, writing on dark sexualities, ghosts and golems from an interdisciplinary perspective. She is a talented multimedia artist whose novels have incorporated aspects of photography, video and audiovisual performances among other genres.

As such, she is an important representative of Latin America’s exciting literary culture. In 2013 she won the prestigious Elena Poniatowska Ibero-American novel prize for her novel Las ninfas a veces sonrien.

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CATHERINE COLE is Professor of Creative Writing and Deputy Dean, Faculty of Creative Arts, Wollongong University, NSW, Australia. As well as her academic writing, she has published novels, short stories, poetry and memoir.

She previously worked at RMIT University in Melbourne, University of Technology, Sydney and the University of UNSW. She is a former member of the Australian Research Council’s Excellence in Research Australia trial committee in Humanities and the Creative Arts and has provided expert advice to a range of universities on their research and creative practice activities.

She is a regular book reviewer, participant in Australian and international writers’ festivals and a judge of major national book awards.

JON COOK is a Professor of Literature and Director of the Centre for Creative and Performing Arts at UEA. His recent publications include After Sebald, an edited collection of essays on the work of W.G. Sebald, Hazlitt in Love, and Poetry in Theory. He has been a judge on the Caine Prize for African Fiction, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and is a member of the Folio Prize Academy.

He has taught at universities in the United States, Europe and India, most recently as a Hurst Visiting Professor at the University of Washington. He played an active role in establishing Writers’ Centre Norwich and the Worlds programme, and has hosted and chaired the Salon since its inception in 2005. He has been a member of Arts Council England since 2008.

DEBORAH DAWKIN has many translations of Norwegian literature as well as academic texts to her name. Among her translations that have received special attention are The Blue Room by Hanne Ørstavik which was chosen by Nicholas Lezard in The Guardian as one of his top ten reads of 2014; Buzz Aldrin: What Happened to You in All the Confusion by Johan Harstad which was shortlisted for The Best Translated Book Awards in 2012; and To Music by Ketil Bjørnstad which was long listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2010. Deborah is currently co-translating eight plays by Ibsen for Penguin Classics. She is also working on a collaborative PhD (UCL and BL), about the life and work of Ibsen translator Michael Meyer, based on Meyer’s archive which was recently acquired by the British Library. Deborah trained as an actress at Drama Centre London, and has an MA in Social and Cultural History.

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C. J. (“JONTY”) DRIVER is a poet, novelist, essayist and former teacher, who was exiled for many years from South Africa and was a prohibited immigrant there until the end of apartheid. He is now resident in England, but travels regularly to the country of his birth.

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ALÍPIO CORREIA DE FRANCA NETO was born in São Paulo. He holds a PhD in Literary Theory and Comparative Literature from the University of São Paulo and a post-doctorate in Theory of Translation. He works as a translator, essayist, poet and playwright, with more than a hundred titles published. His practice as a poettranslator has twice won him the Jabuti Prize, first in 2002, for the book Pomas, um Tostão Cada (Pomes Penyeach), by James Joyce, and again in 2007, for his poetic translation and study on A Balada do Velho Marinheiro (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner), by S. T. Coleridge. In addition, he has rewritten poetry by Robert Browning, Michael Hamburger, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Philip Larkin and Shakespeare, among others.

ANNA FUNDER is one of Australia’s most celebrated authors. Her novel All That I Am won the Miles Franklin and many other awards, and spent a year and a half on the bestseller list.

Anna’s Stasiland, hailed as ‘a classic’ won the Samuel Johnson Prize. Both books are published in over 20 countries.

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VESNA GOLDSWORTHY was born in Belgrade in 1961 and has lived in London since 1986.

She writes in English, her third language. She has authored four widely translated books, including two international bestsellers, both of which were serialised by the BBC: Chernobyl Strawberries, a memoir, and Gorsky, a novel. She will join UEA as Professor in Creative Writing in August 2015.

DAVID GRAHAM is Managing Director of London-based Independent Pavilion Books, former MD of Aurum Publishing Group, Granta Books and Magazine and MD of Canongate Books.

GEIR GULLIKSEN is an author and an editor.

He has written poems, essays, novels and children’s books. A new novel will be published in the fall of 2015. He also writes drama – his first play, A Body, was nominated for The Ibsen Award 2013 and is now being produced in the Netherlands. His second play, Demons 2014 premiered at The National Theatre in Oslo in March 2014. His latest book for children, Joel and Io, has been nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize 2015. In 2014 he was awarded the Aschehoug Prize for his writing: “Many of his works can be highlighted, but the last three novels are in a class by themselves: The Twentieth Day (2009), Simplification (2010) and Bended Knees (2012) are ambitious and powerful love stories which with rude elegance create a new standard for relevant contemporary literature.”

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KIRSTY GUNN is the author of five novels – Rain, The Keepsake, Featherstone, The Boy and the Sea and, most recently, The Big Music – as well as a collection of short stories, This Place you Return to is Home, and 44 Things, a collection of essays, fragments and stories. The recipient of a number of awards and prizes, including the Scottish Arts Council Bursary for Literature, the New York Times Notable Book award and, in 2007, Sundial Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year, she is also Professor of Writing Practice and Study at the University of Dundee where she created and directs the programme there.

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HAN KANG was born in Gwangju, South Korea and moved to Seoul at the age of ten. She studied Korean literature at Yonsei University.

Her novels have won the Yi Sang Literary Prize, the Today’s Young Artist Award, and the Korean Literature Novel Award. Her most recent novel, Human Acts, won the Manhae Literary Award, and is a controversial bestseller in Korea as it deals with the viciously suppressed uprising sparked by the repressive measures of the incumbent president’s late father. The book will be published in English by Portobello Books in 2016 (in Deborah Smith’s translation) following on from the critically acclaimed The Vegetarian (2015). Han currently teaches creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts.

LUCY HUGHES-HALLETT is a biographer, critic and cultural historian. Her subject matter has ranged from ancient Egypt to modern dictatorships, but always with a focus on propaganda, the political uses of story-telling and the cult of personality. Her latest book, The Pike - about the poet, serial seducer and proto-fascist Gabriele d’Annunzio - won all three of Britain’s most prestigious literary awards for non-fiction, the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Duff Cooper Prize and the Costa Biography Award. Her other books are Heroes and Cleopatra.

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ERICA JARNES joined English PEN in February 2015. She previously worked as an editor at Bloomsbury Publishing, a literary events programmer at Southbank Centre, and the book campaigns director at The Pigeonhole.

At PEN she manages the Writers in Translation programme, which champions the best literature from around the world through publisher grants, a weekly blog of international writing, year-round public events, professional development seminars and workshops and collaborative projects. @englishpen

YUNJUNG KIM is an English - Korean translator and freelance project manager. She worked at the British Council as the Arts Officer for five years. The projects she was involved in as a main coordinator include London Book Fair Korea Market Focus, the UK-Korea Curators’ Exchange Programme and Art Talk: Between Art & Audiences. She has also worked for music festivals and magazines in South Korea.

She is currently reading an MA in Cultural Policy, Relations and Diplomacy at Goldsmiths, University of London. She holds a BA in English Literature and Language.

ROMAS KINKA works as a forensic linguist and a literary translator and finds that both disciplines complement one another. In the first case, a person’s liberty may be at stake due to a mistake in translation, in the second - an inadequate translation may undeservedly harm a writer’s reputation outside of his or her own country. The best compliment he has received comes from the Lithuanian author Kristina Sabaliauskaitė: “It was a real pleasure to read Romas Kinka’s translation... I felt as if I’d written it myself in English.” His translation of her collection of stories Vilnius Wilno Vilna comes out this year.

Interpreting for Han Kang under the auspices of the Arts Council of Korea

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DUNCAN LARGE is Academic Director of the British Centre for Literary Translation. He studied at Oxford University and worked at the University of Paris III, Trinity College Dublin and Swansea University before joining the University of East Anglia in 2014. He has published two monographs, five edited collections and numerous articles on Nietzsche and other topics in modern German literature and thought, comparative literature and translation studies. He has published translations from German and French into English, and is joint General Editor of The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (Stanford University Press).

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KRYS LEE is the author of the short story collection Drifting House published by Faber and Faber. She is the recipient of the 20142015 Rome Prize fellowship in literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the 2012 Story Prize Spotlight Award, and a finalist for the 2012 BBC International Story Prize.

Forthcoming publications include her first novel as well as a translation of Young-ha Kim’s novel I Hear Your Voice. She is an assistant professor of creative writing and literature at Yonsei University, Underwood International College.

She is currently based in Rome, but lives for most of the year in Seoul.

BHAVIT MEHTA is Literature Programme Manager in the Literature Team at the British Council, currently leading on a year-long bilateral literature programme with Mexico.

Previously, he has worked as a publisher, translator and festival director. He studied Biological Sciences and worked at UCL before entering the world of children’s books in 2009, writing and publishing tales from India. Between 2010 and 2014 Bhavit co-directed the South Asian Literature Festival in London. During this time, he also worked on other literary projects, programmed school events, and engaged in heritage projects. He has been an advisor to the British Centre for Literary Translation, and has worked with the International Board on Books for Young People and English PEN.

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MARION MOLTENO grew up in South Africa and has worked in education with ethnic minorities in the UK, and internationally for Save the Children. If You Can Walk, You Can Dance won a Commonwealth Writers Prize. Her latest novel, Uncertain Light, is set in Central Asia in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and was described by The Bookseller as ‘A terrifically absorbing, topical and quietly affecting novel of interlocking worlds and relationships.’ @MarionMolteno

SIGITAS PARULSKIS (b. 1965 in Obeliai, Lithuania) is a poet, playwright, essayist, novelist and translator. He majored in Lithuanian Language and Literature at Vilnius University.

Parulskis’ works include several books of poetry, two books of essays, two short story collections and five novels. He is also an author of several plays and scripts for theatre.

DAN RICHARDS was born in Wales in 1982 and grew up in Bristol. He has studied at UEA and Norwich Art School. Dan is co-author of Holloway with Robert Macfarlane and Stanley Donwood, published by Faber in 2013. The Beechwood Airship Interviews, a book about the creative process and the importance of art for art’s sake, will be published by The Friday Project/HarperCollins in July 2015. Climbing Days, an exploration of the writing and climbing lives of his great great aunt and uncle - Dorothy Pilley and I. A. Richards - will be published by Faber in Spring 2016. @Dan_Zep

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MAMTA SAGAR is a poet, playwright, translator, cultural analyst and academic writing in the Kannada language spoken in the Southern Indian state of Karnataka. Her latest book, Hide & Seek, a collection of selected poems in English translation was published in the UK in January 2014. Her works are taught at universities in India and abroad. She is currently the Charles Wallace India Trust fellow at the British Centre for Literary Translation, University of East Anglia. @mamtasagar

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ELIF SHAFAK is Turkey’s most-read woman writer and an award-winning novelist. She writes in both English and Turkish, and has published 13 books, nine of which are novels, including: The Bastard of Istanbul, The Forty Rules of Love, Honour and her nonfiction memoir Black Milk.

Her books have been translated into more than forty languages. Her new novel The Architect’s Apprentice was published by Penguin UK in autumn 2014. @elif_safak

JAMES SHEA is the author of two poetry collections, The Lost Novel and Star in the Eye, which was selected for the Poetry Society of America’s New American Poets series.

A former Fulbright Scholar in Hong Kong, he is currently an Assistant Professor at Hong Kong Baptist University.

2015

DEBORAH SMITH’s translations from Korean include Han Kang’s The Vegetarian (Portobello Books, 2015) and Human Acts (Portobello 2016) and Bae Suah’s The Essayist’s Desk and The Low Hills of Seoul. She recently founded @TiltedAxisPress, a not-for-profit publishing house focusing on translations from Asia and Africa. She tweets as @londonkoreanist

DENNISON SMITH is a novelist, poet and playwright as well as an actor and director. Her work has been performed and published in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.

She is the author of two poetry collections and Scavenger, a work of poetic fiction. The Eye of the Day is her first novel. Originally from Chicago and Vermont, she now splits her time between London, England, and a small island in British Columbia. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, where she is presently teaching and pursuing her PhD in Creative and Critical Writing.

GEORGE SZIRTES was born in Budapest in 1948, and came to England with his family after the 1956 Hungarian uprising. He was educated in England, training as a painter, and has always written in English. In recent years he has worked as a translator of Hungarian literature, producing editions of such writers as Ottó Orbán, Zsuzsa Rakovszky and Ágnes Nemes Nagy. He co-edited Bloodaxe’s Hungarian anthology The Colonnade of Teeth.

His Bloodaxe poetry books are The Budapest File (2000); An English Apocalypse (2001); Reel (2004), winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize; New & Collected Poems (2008); The Burning of the Books and other poems (2009) and Bad Machine (2013). Bloodaxe has also published John Sears’ critical study Reading George Szirtes (2008).

Szirtes lives in Norfolk and recently retired from teaching at the University of East Anglia.

He is currently translating the Man Booker Prize winner László Krasznahorkai.

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WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

D. J. TAYLOR is the author of eleven novels, most recently The Windsor Faction, joint winner of the 2014 Sidewise Award for Alternate History, and several works of non-fiction, including Orwell: The Life, which won the 2003 Whitbread Prize for Biography. @djtaylorwriter

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RITA VALIUKONYTE is the Cultural Attaché at the Lithuanian Embassy in London. She graduated from Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas with a B.A. in German language and literature, followed by an M.Phil. in German from Bergen University (Norway) and an M.A. in European Studies from the Free University of Berlin. Rita has been involved in cultural project management since 2004; in 2008 she was appointed Lithuania’s Cultural Attaché to Austria and Croatia and has been working in the same capacity in London since April 2012.

JACK WANG is the 2014-15 David T.K. Wong Creative Writing Fellow at UEA. His work has appeared in The New Quarterly, The Humber Literary Review, and Joyland Magazine and was shortlisted for the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. He is an associate professor in the Department of Writing at Ithaca College. @jackandholman

2015

D. W. WILSON is the author of Once You Break a Knuckle, a collection of short stories, and Ballistics, a novel. His fiction and essays have appeared in literary journals on both sides of the Atlantic, and he is the winner of both the BBC National Short Story Award, and the CBC Short Story Prize. He is a Canadian citizen by birth and temperament, and only recently repatriated after half a decade in the United Kingdom. It’s good to be home.

KYOKO YOSHIDA’s first collection of short stories Disorientalism came out from Vagabond Press in Sydney. Her stories take place in actual cities re-imagined as a hybrid zone between reality and nightmare. She also translates contemporary Japanese poetry and drama into English. She teaches American Literature at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. @kyoshidatwee

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WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

WRITERS’ CENTRE NORWICH STAFF

CHRIS GRIBBLE, CEO

ANNELLI CLARKE FINANCE OFFICER

LAUREN FARLEY PROGRAMME ASSISTANT

MARTIN FIGURA FINANCE MANAGER

TINA GARCIA PROGRAMME ASSISTANT

KATE GRIFFIN ASSOCIATE PROGRAMME DIRECTOR

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2015

ALICE KENT DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS

MELANIE KIDD PROGRAMME COORDINATOR, BRAVE NEW READS

ALISON MCFARLANE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

CONOR MCGEOWN DEVELOPMENT MANAGER

JON MORLEY PROGRAMME DIRECTOR

LAURA STIMSON PROGRAMME MANAGER, ESCALATOR

ANNA SCRAFIELD COMMUNICATIONS ASSISTANT

RICHARD WHITE COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER

ROWAN WHITESIDE COMMUNICATIONS COORDINATOR, BRAVE NEW READS

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WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION Writers’ Centre Norwich has moved into its new home at Dragon Hall. We are the literature development agency in the East of England, and the driving force behind Norwich’s UNESCO World City of Literature activities. Our friendly staff are at your disposal throughout the Festival, so for enquiries large and small, for a quiet place to relax with a cup of tea, to record an interview or use the internet, and to find out more about the work we do – just ask.

ACCOMMODATION Your accommodation is either the Premier Inn, Duke St or The Maids Head Hotel. Both are a few minutes walk from the central shopping district where you can access shops, banks, restaurants and bars.

ACCESSING THE INTERNET Wi Fi internet access is complimentary throughout your hotel; you will be given a password on arrival at Reception. Computers with internet access will be present during the afternoon events, and you can also log in to Wi Fi at Dragon Hall.

THE MAIDS HEAD HOTEL Tombland, Norwich, NR3 1LB 01603 272 007

WRITERS’ CENTRE NORWICH Dragon Hall, 115 – 123 King Street, Norwich NR1 1QE 01603 877 177

PREMIER INN Duke Street, Norwich, NR3 3AP 01603 283340

PHOTOGRAPHY AND VIDEO RECORDING Photographs and video recordings will be taken throughout Worlds and may be used for the purposes of publicity, fundraising and future activities of the festival. If you would prefer not to have your image used, please inform a Writers’ Centre Norwich staff member.

CATERING All meals are provided during the week of Worlds.

Details of lunches and dinners can be found in the schedule. A choice of Continental and Full English breakfast is included in your hotel room booking – simply make your way to the restaurant between 7am and 9.30am and wait to be seated by a member of the hotel staff.

LIVE WEB-STREAMING It’s possible that some literature events and debates taking place in Dragon Hall will be web-streamed live to enable audiences around the world to view the readings and provocations.

Video footage will also be made available afterwards. The stream will be available via the Writers’ Centre Norwich Periscope account.

TRANSPORT Writers’ Centre Norwich will organise free transport to and from the Festival events, and to all Festival venues that are further than a short walking distance from each other (including restaurants). If you have any questions or additional requests, please ask a member of the Writers’ Centre Norwich team.

TWITTER If you tweet, we are using the hashtag #Worlds15 for this event. You can also follow tweets throughout Worlds Literature Festival from @writerscentre.

LAUREN FARLEY Programme Assistant 07540 292 912 JON MORLEY Programme Director 07904 163 025

NORWICH BUS STATION Surrey Street, Norwich Regular buses from Norwich to the rest of East Anglia and much of the UK. Norwich Train Station Regular trains from Norwich to the rest of East Anglia and much of the UK. NORWICH TAXI SERVICES 01603 619 619 01603 444 555

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EXPENSES Your registration pack will include an expenses claim form for any UK public transport expenses incurred travelling to and from Worlds. If you have not already done so, please fill in any outstanding claims and present with your receipts or tickets. Annelli Clarke, Finance Officer for Writers’ Centre Norwich, will attend Worlds on Friday 19 June between 12-1pm to collect expenses forms. All expenses will be paid in cash in British pounds. If you are not staying until the Friday please give your expense form to any member of the WCN team.

Worlds Literature Festival 2015 is made possible with support from Arts Council England and the University of East Anglia