Worlds Literature Festival 2013 by National Centre for Writing

A WRITERS’ CENTRE NORWICH EVENT

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL 2013 MONDAY 17 TO FRIDAY 21 JUNE

CONTENTS

WELCOME TO WORLDS 2013

NORWICH UNESCO CITY OF LITERATURE

USEFUL INFORMATION

ENJOYING NORWICH

SCHEDULE

MAP

WORLDS PARTICIPANTS

MEET WRITERS’ CENTRE NORWICH

NOTES

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

WELCOME TO WORLDS 2013

WORLDS 2013 WAYS OF WRITING: WAYS OF READING

Welcome to Norwich, the newest UNESCO City of Literature and the first in England! We’re very much looking forward to welcoming you to our city.

AN INTRODUCTION Each year, we bring together a number of fiction and non-fiction writers, poets, translators and teachers of writing in order to support an extended conversation over four days about writing as an art and craft. There is a programme of public events, readings and celebrations over the course of Worlds, and at the heart of what we do is the private Salon. The Salon is a space created and fed by the writers who take part and is driven by a series of provocations, essays, conversations and questions from the writers present. While the team at Writers’ Centre, along with Jon Cook of the University of East Anglia and the writers commissioned to present provocations, have some sense of the shape of the discussion over the four days, we really have no idea where the conversation and the group might take us. We entrust that decision to each of you taking part. In 2012 we enjoyed an amazing Salon on the theme of Memoir, Truth and the Self with provocations from JM Coetzee, Dame Gillian Beer, Gail Jones, Chika Unigwe and Alvin Pang and events featuring Jeanette Winterson, Jo Shapcott, Anna Funder and Michael Ondaatje. An outline of last year’s events can be found at www.writerscentrenorwich.org.uk/ worldsliteraturefestival2012 brochure.aspx and you can read more about the 2011 Salon here: www.writerscentrenorwich.org.uk/ joiningtheworldssalon.aspx

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

One of the themes to emerge from the discussions last year was a shared interest and concern in the ways that writing and the writing life are changing in the twenty-first century. How ought writers respond to other artists and art forms, to new technologies and ways of working? How do other art forms and new means of sharing reading and writing have an impact on the way writers are working (and thinking) today? How are the artistic, social, economic and technological conditions around writers transforming how they see themselves as artists and how they live as writers? So the Salon in 2013 will be a series of conversations that address, from differing directions, the notion of ‘Ways of Writing: Ways of Reading’. Our provocateurs will include Geoff Dyer on music, photography, film and writing; Ruth Ozeki on writing and reading as a philosophical investigation into the self; Marcel Möring on the novel as an experiment in art in the face of the commercial market; Sjón on transforming his grandfather’s memoirs into a novel and rewriting that as an opera; Peng Lun and Eric Abrahamsen on the emerging market for adaptation, treatment and translation in China and Rachel Lichtenstein on what technology (in the form of a digital app) has brought to her book on London’s Hatton Garden. We’re delighted that our Chair will again be Professor Jon Cook and that George Szirtes will act as a rapporteur and expert summariser in the final session.

Of course, the writers commissioned to offer provocations might choose to address themselves to questions very different to those I outlined. You might, as a group, choose to move the conversation in any number of directions, and it’s partly this freedom that makes the Salon such a pleasure to take part in.

The Hostry at Norwich Cathedral by Dave Guttridge

One of last year’s participating writers noted that: Worlds is without peer: one of the most important and unique literary events anywhere on the globe. The Worlds Salon – a grouping of writers from across different genres, generations and nationalities to discuss the key literary concerns of the day – is a tour de force of thoughtful and sophisticated literary connoisseurship that actually works. Egos are suspended, differences set aside, energies and attention funnelled into rollicking roundtable dialogues that sound like every word matters, and matters intimately. I hope that the conversations this year turn out to be as productive and enjoyable for you. In addition to the Salon we will have a programme of afternoon readings and evening events to celebrate Norwich’s status as a UNESO City of Literature. The WCN team hopes you have a wonderful time! CHRIS GRIBBLE CHIEF EXECUTIVE, WRITERS’ CENTRE NORWICH

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

NORWICH UNESCO CITY OF LITERATURE 2 A CITY OF FIRSTS IN 2012, NORWICH CONSOLIDATED ITS POSITION AS ENGLAND’S FOREMOST LITERARY CITY BY BECOMING ITS FIRST UNESCO CITY OF LITERATURE, JOINING AN ELITE INTERNATIONAL NETWORK COMPRISING EDINBURGH, MELBOURNE, IOWA CITY, DUBLIN AND REYKJAVIK. Here are ten reasons to be proud of Norwich’s literary influence: 1 A CITY OF LITERATURE Norwich has been a literary city for 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.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

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 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. 3 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 five 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.

4 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. 5 A CITY FOR WRITERS AND READERS Formed in 2004, and the force behind Norwich’s UNESCO bid, Writers’ Centre Norwich is a literature development agency that works locally, nationally and internationally. It 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 highprofile events throughout the year. The Worlds international gathering of writers is held each June and offers a uniquely writer-focused forum for discussion and debate about writing and literature from a writer’s perspective. In March 2012, Writers’ Centre Norwich was awarded £3 million from Arts Council England’s Capital Investment Programme fund to develop the National Centre for Writing (NCW). The NCW, in partnership with Norwich City Council, UEA and Norfolk County Council, will be a hub for excellence in literature from around the world.

6 A CITY OF WRITERS

7 A CITY OF INDEPENDENT MINDS

8 A CITY OF REFUGE

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 (Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan 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.

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 evidence-based science. Celebrated polymath Thomas Browne, prison reformer Elizabeth Fry and, more recently, humorist Stephen Fry, have all called Norwich their home.

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.

Worlds writers on Elm Hill, Norwich by Facundo Arrizabalaga

9 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. 10 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 biannual International Literary Festival regularly plays to packed houses of up to 500, and celebrated its twentysecond anniversary in 2012. Within an hour of Norwich are a multitude of other literature festivals, including the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, Poetry-nextthe-Sea and Cambridge Wordfest.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

USEFUL INFORMATION

WRITERS’ CENTRE NORWICH

ACCOMMODATION

CATERING

Located on Princes Street (just around the corner from your hotel and the Cathedral Hostry), festival organiser Writers’ Centre Norwich is the leading 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 – then please do feel free to drop in!

Your accommodation is in the picturesque Maids Head Hotel on the ancient street of Tombland, the heart of Norwich’s Cathedral Quarter and a few minutes’ walk away from the central shopping district, where you can access shops, banks, restaurants and bars.

All meals are provided during the week of Worlds (17 – 21 June). Details of lunches and dinners can be found in the schedule. A choice of Continental and Full English breakfast is included in your Maids Head 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.

Writers’ Centre Norwich

The Worlds Salon by Martin Figura

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

The Maids Head Hotel Tombland, Norwich, Norfolk NR3 1LB T: 01603 272007 F: 01603 613688 ACCESSING THE INTERNET Wi Fi internet access is complimentary throughout the Maids Head 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 the Writers’ Centre Norwich offices.

TRANSPORT WCN 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 WCN team.

REIMBURSEMENT

THE WORLDS TEAM

MEDIA

International: Your registration pack will include an expenses form for expenses incurred travelling to and from the Worlds festival. Please see the International Travel Guide for travel booking recommendations. Please fill in any outstanding claims (eg train fare, taxi cost) and present with your receipts or tickets to the WCN Finance Staff before departing Worlds festival. Annelli Clarke, Finance Officer will be available at the WCN offices on Wednesday and Thursday mornings between 10 and 12.00 to complete these payments. Amounts over £200 will be paid by electronic transfer so we will require your international bank details, for amounts below £200, please note that we are only able to provide reimbursement in pounds sterling. UK: Your registration pack will include an expenses form for expenses incurred travelling to and from the Worlds festival. You can fill in any outstanding claims (eg train fare, taxi cost). Please send your completed expenses form and receipts via post to Martin Figura following Worlds. All expenses will be paid following the festival..

Writers’ Centre Norwich office: (between 9am and 5pm) 0044 (0)1603 877 177

Photography and Video Recording Photographs and short video recordings will be taken throughout the week and will be used for publicity purposes. If you would prefer not to have your photograph taken, please let Writers’ Centre Norwich know.

Jon Morley (Programme Director): 0044 (0)7904 163 025 Lara Narkiewicz (Programme Assistant): 0044 (0)7984 764 054 OTHER USEFUL NUMBERS Local taxi service 01603 666 333 01603 619 619 Emergency services (Police, Fire and Ambulance) 999

Audio Recording Writers’ Centre Norwich may audio record your events with us. Audio will be used for non-profit purposes only. Recordings will include the provocations given during Salon sessions but the Salon discussion will not be recorded for public use. Images, video and audio may be shared following Worlds via www.writerscentrenorwich.org.uk www.newwriting.net Twitter If you tweet we are using the hashtag #worlds13 for this event.

The Norwich Showcase at the Hostry by Dave Guttridge

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

ENJOYING NORWICH

THINGS TO SEE THE FOLLOWING IS A GUIDE TO SOME OF OUR FAVOURITE PLACES IN NORWICH. FOR MORE IDEAS AND LISTINGS, SEE: www.visitnorwich.co.uk www.visitnorfolk.co.uk FURTHER INFORMATION CAN BE FOUND AT THE NORWICH TOURIST INFORMATION CENTRE, THE FORUM, MILLENNIUM PLAIN, NORWICH, NORFOLK, 01603 213999.

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, (a beautiful crossing place on the river where tea, coffee and cake can be purchased cheaply), the Old Hospital (a stunning building), 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. (A guided tour is included as part of the Worlds schedule.) 2 Explore the shops in The Lanes and the Market. There has been a market on that site since Norman times and it is now the largest Monday-toSaturday 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 dresses in Exile, jewellery in Lisa Angel, books in The Book Hive, and a bit of everything in Thorns.

3 Mousehold Heath offers the countryside on your doorstep; you can lose yourself in forest, rolling hills, scrub and outdoor fun. There is also an 18 hole Pitch and Putt course hidden away. 4 Plantation Gardens is a hidden gem. Located just behind the Roman 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 are requested. 5 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. 6 No visit to Norwich is complete without lunch at the Waffle House, which serves organic, savoury and sweet dishes with savoury and sweet waffles. 39 St. Giles Street, Norwich, Norfolk NR2 1JN.

Landmarks of Norwich by Martin Figura

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

7 Take a trip out into Norfolk. Great Yarmouth is a touristâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dream: 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. 8 Norwich Castle offers an intriguing mix of local history, art (featuring lots of Norfolk School watercolours), with a bit of Victorian taxidermy and Ancient Egyptian history thrown in for good measure. We recommend a climb to the top to look out over Norwich, and a descent into the dungeons below. 9 Strangers Hall on Charing Cross is one of Norwichâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;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.

BARS

TRANSPORT

Franks 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.

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 East Anglia and the rest of the UK.

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. Bicycle Shop 17 St. Benedicts Street, NR2 4PE A quirky independent cafe / bar that serves food and drinks in comfortable surroundings. 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. Image courtesy of The Book Hive

Image courtesy of The Forum

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

SCHEDULE

MONDAY 17 JUNE

TUESDAY 18 JUNE

WEDNESDAY 19 JUNE

5.30 – 7pm The Cathedral Hostry WELCOME DINNER

12 – 12.30pm The Cathedral Hostry LUNCH

8pm – 10pm Fusion at The Forum THE LAUNCH OF 26 FOR NORWICH In this new interactive website, 26 contemporary writers and 26 UEA students respond to the work and lives of 26 of Norwich’s literary luminaries – the resulting conversations and stories span 900 years of the city’s literary heritage. With readings by Sara Sheridan, John Simmons and Elise Valmorbida.

12.30pm – 3.30pm The Cathedral Hostry SALON DAY ONE: WITH PROVOCATIONS BY SJÓN AND RUTH OZEKI

12.30 – 3.30pm The Cathedral Hostry SALON DAY TWO: WITH PROVOCATIONS BY MARCEL MÖRING AND RACHEL LICHTENSTEIN

GETTING THERE: Representatives from Writers’ Centre Norwich will escort you to the venue.

4pm – 5.30pm The Cathedral Hostry AFTERNOON READINGS Featuring Rozalie Hirs (Netherlands), Rachida Lamrabet (Belgium), Bejan Matur (Turkey), Marcel Möring (Netherlands) and Neel Mukherjee (UK), and hosted by Chris Gribble (Chief Executive, WCN). 5.30 – 7pm Last Restaurant DINNER GETTING THERE: Representatives from Writers’ Centre Norwich will escort you between the venue and the restaurant.

7.30 – 9.30pm The Cathedral Hostry TORN BETWEEN THE LIGHT AND DARK: MOOMINS, MERCHANDISE AND THE ART AND LIFE OF TOVE JANSSON Poet and writer Rebecca Swift will be joined by novelist and screenwriter Esther Freud, actor Samuel West, and writer and musician Sjón to consider the legacy of the great Swedish writer and illustrator Tove Jansson.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

4 – 5.30pm The Cathedral Hostry AFTERNOON READINGS Featuring Tash Aw (Malaysia / UK), Chandrahas Choudhury (India), Melissa Lucashenko (Australia), Elif Shafak (Turkey) and Zhang Yueran (China), and hosted by Jon Morley (Programme Director, WCN). 5.30 – 7pm Pinnochio’s DINNER GETTING THERE: Representatives from Writers’ Centre Norwich will escort you between the venue and the restaurant.

7.30 – 9.00pm The Cathedral Hostry GRANTA PRESENTS THE BEST OF YOUNG BRITISH NOVELISTS 4 Previous Granta “Best Of” writers for past decades have included Salman Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan, Will Self, Jeanette Winterson, AL Kennedy and Ali Smith, so the new selection is always a reliable indicator of quality. Featuring David Szalay and Evie Wyld, introduced by Granta’s deputy editor Ellah Allfrey.

THURSDAY 20 JUNE 12 – 12.30pm The Cathedral Hostry LUNCH 12.30 – 3.30pm The Cathedral Hostry SALON DAY THREE: WITH PROVOCATIONS BY PENG LUN WITH ERIC ABRAHAMSEN AND MASASHI MATSUIE WITH MICHAEL EMMERICH 4.30 – 6pm The Cathedral Hostry TOUR OF NORWICH CATHEDRAL BY COLIN HOWEY (NORWICH GRAFFITI SURVEY) 6 – 7pm FREE TIME

FRIDAY 21 JUNE 7 – 9pm Dragon Hall MEIR OF NORWICH Meir Ben Elijah is medieval England’s only known Hebrew poet, whose extraordinary voice emerges from a time of brutal conflict and religious persecution. Now a new set of translations, performed here by TS Eliot Prize winner George Szirtes and the London Cantorial Singers, brings this 13th Century poet back to life, evoking a distant time when Norwich was a world capital of trade and learning. With translators Bente Elsworth and Ellman Crasnow and editor Keiron Pim. GETTING BACK: Representatives from Writers’ Centre Norwich will meet you at the Maid’s Head reception at 6.30pm.

9.30pm Iron House DINNER

12 – 1pm UEA Council Chamber LUNCH GETTING THERE: Transport will depart from outside the Maids Head at 11.30am.

1 – 4pm UEA Council Chamber SALON DAY FOUR: WITH PROVOCATIONS BY GEOFF DYER AND GEORGE SZIRTES 4.30 – 6pm UEA Drama Studio AFTERNOON READINGS Featuring Pedro Carmona-Alvarez (Norway), Michelle de Kretser (Australia), Ruth Ozeki (USA/Canada) and Masashi Matsuie (Japan) with Michael Emmerich (USA/Japan), and hosted by Kate Griffin (International Programme Director, British Centre for Literary Translation). 6pm – 7.30pm FREE TIME

An audience at Worlds by Martin Figura

8pm The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts Restaurant (UEA) FAREWELL CELEBRATION AND DINNER To mark the end of Worlds and celebrate Norwich’s new status as a City of Literature. GETTING THERE: Transport will depart from outside the Maids Head at 7.30pm.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

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MAP

This map is based upon or reproduced from Ordnance Survey material with the permission of Ordnance Survey on behalf of the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office © Crown Copyright. Unauthorised reproduction infringes Crown copyright and may lead to prosecution or civil proceedings. Norwich City Council Licence No. LA 10009747

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WORLDS PARTICIPANTS

ELLAH ALLFREY

TASH AW

Eric Abrahamsen is a Chinese-English literary translator and publishing consultant who has lived in Beijing since 2001. He is the manager of Paper Republic (www.paperrepublic.org), which promotes Chinese literature abroad, and an editor of Pathlight magazine, featuring Chinese short stories and poetry in English translation. He is the recipient of NEA and PEN translation grants, and his translation of Wang Xiaofang’s The Civil Servant’s Notebook was published in 2012 by Penguin.

Ellah Allfrey O.B.E. is Deputy Editor of Granta, an international literary journal of new writing. Born in Zimbabwe and educated in the United States, she began her publishing career as editorial assistant at Penguin Press, working on history and modern classics titles. Before joining Granta, she was Senior Editor at Jonathan Cape, Random House where she continued to publish history as well as introducing a list of young African writers including Brian Chikwava, Dinaw Mengestu and Peter Akinti. She sits on the board of Writers’ Centre Norwich and the Council of the Caine Prize for African Writing. A Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts, Allfrey was awarded an OBE in 2011 for services to the publishing industry.

Toby Rhind-Tutt

ERIC ABRAHAMSEN

Tash Aw is the author of three novels which have been translated into 23 languages, won the Whitbread and Commonwealth prizes for Best First Novel and been longlisted for the MAN Booker Prize. He was born in Taipei, brought up in Malaysia and is now based in London.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

WORLDS PARTICIPANTS

SIGRID BOUSSET

ANTONIA BYATT

Christopher Bigsby is an academic, novelist, biographer and broadcaster. For eighteen years he chaired the British Council’s Cambridge Seminar, and for twenty-one years, the Arthur Miller Centre International Literary Festival at the University of East Anglia. (Four volumes of interviews based on this series have been published.) At UEA, he is responsible for 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.

Sigrid Bousset is the Managing Director of the international house of literature Passa Porta, a Brussels based organisation founded in 1998. Passa Porta organizes literary evenings, public debates, a residence-programme for international writers, special creative projects on contemporary literature, and the renowned bi-annual international Passa Porta Festival of Literature. Sigrid Bousset is a board member of HALMA, the European network of literary centres.

Alexandra Cool

CHRISTOPHER BIGSBY

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

Antonia Byatt is Director, Literature at Arts Council England and from June 2013 she will also be a Director in the South East Area, based in Cambridge. Before joining Arts Council England, Antonia was Director of the Women’s Library at London Metropolitan University, an academic research library and cultural centre containing the largest collection of women’s history in the UK. Prior to joining the library, Antonia was head of literature at Southbank Centre, which involved overseeing the literature programme of around 130 events a year and overall management of the poetry library. She is a governor of the Bishopsgate Institute and since 2008 has been governor of New Buckinghamshire University.

PEDRO CARMONA-ALVAREZ

PROFESSOR CATHERINE COLE

Chandrahas Choudhury is a novelist based in New Delhi. He is the author of the novel Arzee the Dwarf (2009), which was shortlisted for the Commonwealth First Book Award and selected by World Literature Today as one of 60 essential works of Indian literature in English since 1947. The book was translated into German and Spanish and appears this year in America (NYRBLit). Choudhury also reviews books for the New York Times and the Washington Post. He is the Fiction & Poetry editor of the Indian monthly The Caravan, and writes a weekly column on Indian affairs for Bloomberg World View.

Professor 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.

Eva Lene Gilje Østensen

CHANDRAHAS CHOUDHURY

Pedro Carmona-Alvarez was born in Chile and moved to Norway as a ten year old. He has published three collections of poetry, three novels, a collection of essays, an anthology of translated poetry (with Gunnar Wærness), six albums with Sister Sonny and a solo album under the name of Moonpedro. His new album and collection of poems will be released in September 2013. He lives in Bergen with a dog that loves listening to Miles Davis.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

WORLDS PARTICIPANTS

JON COOK

ED COTTRELL

ANDREW COWAN

Jon Cook is Professor of Literature at the University of East Anglia. The focus of his teaching and research has been on romantic and modern literature. He has supervised a large number of PhD students on subjects in modern literature, literature and philosophy, and creative and critical writing and he was convenor of the MA in creative writing at UEA from 1986–96. He has taught at universities in the US, Europe and India, most recently as a Hurst Visiting Professor at the University of Washington. He is a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council Peer Review College. His recent publications include Poetry in Theory (2004) and a biographical study, Hazlitt in Love (2007). He played an active role in establishing Writers’ Centre Norwich and its Worlds programme, and has hosted and chaired the Salon of international writers since its inception in 2005.

Ed Cottrell works at the British Council as a Literature Assistant, focusing on the Cultural Programme at the London Book Fair. Prior to this he worked as Digital Media Officer at Writers’ Centre Norwich and as a Webmaster at HowTheLightGetsIn. He lives in London, and can be found online at @erghargh and erghargh.tumblr.com

Andrew Cowan is a graduate of the Creative Writing MA at UEA, where he was taught by Malcolm Bradbury and Angela Carter. His first novel, Pig (1994), won a Betty Trask Award, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, The Authors’ Club First Novel Award, a Scottish Arts Council Book Award, the Ruth Hadden Memorial Award, and was shortlisted for five other literary awards. Common Ground (1996) and Crustaceans (2000) both received Arts Council bursaries. What I Know was the recipient of an Arts Council Writers’ Award and was published in 2005. His creative writing guidebook, The Art of Writing Fiction, was published in 2011. His fifth novel, Worthless Men, was published in 2013. He is the Director of the Creative Writing programme at UEA.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

MICHELLE DE KRETSER

GEOFF DYER

MICHAEL EMMERICH

Michelle de Kretser was born in Sri Lanka and moved to Australia when she was 14. She was educated in Melbourne and Paris, and published her first novel, The Rose Grower, in 1999. Her second novel, The Hamilton Case (2003), was winner of the Tasmania Pacific Prize, the Encore Award (UK) and the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Southeast Asia and Pacific). The Lost Dog was published in 2007 and was one of 13 books on the long list for the 2008 MAN Booker Prize for Fiction. From 1989 to 1992 she was a founding editor of the Australian Women’s Book Review. Her most recent novel is Questions of Travel.

Geoff Dyer’s books have been translated into more than twenty languages. His awards include a Somerset Maugham Prize, the EM Forster Award, and a 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for the essay collection Otherwise Known as the Human Condition. His latest book is Zona, about Tarkovsky’s film Stalker.

Michael Emmerich is assistant professor of Japanese literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has translated a dozen or so books from Japanese into English, including novels and short story collections by authors ranging from the Nobel Prize recipient Yasunari Kawabata to the bestseller Banana Yoshimoto. His translation of Hiromi Kawakami’s Manazuru was awarded the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature in 2010. He is the editor of Read Real Japanese Fiction (Kodansha) and New Penguin Parallel Texts: Short Stories in Japanese (Penguin) and the author of The Tale of Genji: Translation, Canonization, and World Literature (Columbia University Press, forthcoming in August, 2013).

www.geoffdyer.com

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WORLDS PARTICIPANTS

ESTHER FREUD

KATE GRIFFIN

ALICE GUTHRIE

Esther Freud trained as an actress before writing her first novel Hideous Kinky, published in 1991. Hideous Kinky was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and was made into a film starring Kate Winslet. She has since written six other novels, including The Sea House and Love Falls. She also writes stories, articles and travel pieces for newspapers and magazines, and teaches creative writing, in her own local group and at the Faber Academy. Her most recent book, Lucky Break, was published in April 2011. She lives in London with her husband and three children.

Kate Griffin is an international literature consultant who has developed projects in the Middle East, Asia, and Europe. She is currently International Programme Director at the British Centre for Literary Translation, and also works with Writersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Centre Norwich and the London Review of Books. She has worked for Arts Council England, the British Council, the Arvon Foundation, and PEN International. From 2005â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 2010 she was a judge for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. She spent most of the 1990s working overseas in Belgium and Russia.

Alice Guthrie is a freelance literary and media translator, writer, editor and researcher, and is also Project Manager-Researcher for Arab World and Euro-Mediterranean Projects at Literature Across Frontiers (LAF). As part of her BA in Arabic with Translation from the University of Exeter, UK, she spent two years studying at IFEAD (now IFPO) in Damascus. She has since translated literary work by various Palestinian, Egyptian, Sudanese, Syrian and Saudi Arabian authors into English, with work published by Saqi, Comma Press, World Literature Today and others.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

ROZALIE HIRS

DAVID KARASHIMA

Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor and translator, of work for adults and children, with thirty-something books to his name. His translations from Portuguese, Spanish and French include fiction from Africa, Europe and the Americas, and non-fiction by writers ranging from Portuguese Nobel laureate José Saramago to Brazilian footballer Pelé. He has written works of non-fiction for adults and a picturebook for children; and edited a number of reference books, including the award-winning series of reading guides for children and teenagers, The Ultimate Book Guides. He has judged several book prizes; and his own books have won him the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the Blue Peter Book Award. He is on the board of a number of organisations that promote reading, writing and free expression; a former chair of the Translators’ Association, he is now national programme director of the British Centre for Literary Translation. He is currently translating a Brazilian novel and compiling the new Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature.

Rozalie Hirs has written five poetry books: Locus (1998), Logos (2002), Speling (2005), Geluksbrenger (2008), and Gestamelde werken (2012), published by Querido, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Hirs studied composition with Louis Andriessen and Tristan Murail at the Royal Conservatoire, The Netherlands, and Columbia University, New York. Recent musical works have been performed by Asko|Schönberg, Percussion The Hague, Bozzini Quartet, and Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra. Her CDs Platonic ID (2007), featuring instrumental works written for Asko|Schönberg, and Pulsars (2010), featuring electroacoustic compositions with text, appeared with Attacca records, Amsterdam. Hirs performs her own electroacoustic works with text in the international poetry scene.

Marco Borggreve

DANIEL HAHN

David Karashima is responsible for The Nippon Foundation’s “Read Japan” programme and founded the first Tokyo International Literature Festival in March 2013. His translations have been published by Penguin, Random House, and Faber & Faber, and his novel The Making of the Next Kamimura was published by Kodansha in 2010.

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WORLDS PARTICIPANTS

MELISSA LUCASHENKO

Rachida Lamrabet is a MoroccanBelgian writer who writes in Dutch. She received the Debuutprijs (Debut Prize) for her 2007 novel Woman Country [Vrouwland]. Her second book, A Child of God [Een kind van God, 2008], resulted in the BNG Nieuwe Literatuurprijs (BNG New Literature Prize, Amsterdam). Both books are translated in German by Luchterland Verlag. Her latest novel is The Man Who Didn’t Want to be Buried.

Rachel Lichtenstein’s first book, Rodinsky’s Room (1999, co-written with Iain Sinclair), began as a personal quest and evolved into a compelling psycho-geographical adventure. Now considered a classic of its genre, it has been translated into five languages. Her most recent book, Diamond Street: The Hidden World of Hatton Garden, was published to much critical acclaim in 2012. Diamond Street is the second in a trilogy of nonfiction works for publishers Hamish Hamilton, exploring different London streets. The first in the series, On Brick Lane (2007), was shortlisted for the Ondaatje prize. A volume on Portobello Road will follow. She is also the author of A Little Dust Whispered, Keeping Pace: Older Women of the East End and Rodinsky’s Whitechapel. Current projects include a multimedia, GPS activated, locationbased digital app drawing on content from her book Diamond Street. Lichtenstein trained as a sculptor and her artwork has been widely exhibited both in the UK and internationally. She also curates and hosts multi-media exhibitions, literary salons and literary festivals. In 2011, she co-curated Shorelines: The World’s First Literary Festival of the Sea for arts organisation Metal, alongside poet Lemn Sissay. She is currently working on Shorelines 2013.

Mark Crocker

RACHEL LICHTENSTEIN

James Price

RACHIDA LAMRABET

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

Melissa Lucashenko is an awardwinning novelist who lives between Brisbane and the Bundjalung nation. Her writing explores the stories and passions of ordinary Australians with particular reference to Aboriginal people and others living around the margins of the First World. Melissa’s most recent book is Mullumbimby, a contemporary novel of romantic love and cultural warfare set in a remote NSW valley. Melissa is a founding member of Sisters Inside, a groundbreaking organisation which supports criminalised women in Queensland. She is a member of the national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board, and is currently working on a novel of historical Queensland, as well as several screenplays. www.melissalucashenko.com.au

PENG LUN

MASASHI MATSUIE

BEJAN MATUR

Peng Lun was born in 1976. He studied journalism in Shanghai International Studies University and worked as a journalist with a weekly newspaper on books and publishing. In 2004 he joined Shanghai 99 Readers’ Culture, a young private publisher with a book club and an online bookstore. He is editor of foreign fiction, mostly literary novels and short stories. His authors include JD Salinger, Philip Roth, EL Doctorow, William Trevor, Patrick Modiano, Irène Némirovsky, Michael Ondaatje, Colm Tóibín, Paul Auster, Colum McCann, Javier Marias, Enrique Vila-Matas, etc. He is editor of the Chinese edition of Granta magazine, which launched in March 2013. He also translated some books from English to Chinese such as The Patrimony and Everyman by Philip Roth, At Random: The Reminiscences of Bennett Cerf and Max Perkins: Editor of Genius by A Scott Berg. In 2011 he helped initiate Shanghai International Literature Week, a literary festival at Shanghai Book Fair.

Masashi Matsuie is an author, editor, and visiting professor at Keio University. He worked for the publisher Shinchosha for 28 years, during which time he founded Shincho Crest Books, a series of contemporary literature in translation, and the quarterly magazine The Thinker. His first novel At the Foot of the Volcano published in 2012 was awarded the Yomiuri Literary Prize.

Bejan Matur was born of an Alevi Kurdish family in Turkey. In her university years, she was published in several literary periodicals. Reviewers found her poetry “dark and mystic”. It was shamanist poetry with pagan perceptions, belonging to the past rather than the present, of her birthplace and of the nature and life of her village; it has been translated into 24 languages. She is a former director of a cultural foundation called DKSV (Diyarbakır Cultural Art Foundation) which is located in Diyarbakır, where she conducted social projects with children and women who had been removed from their villages. She is an expert counsel for the DPI (Democratic Progress Institue) which focuses on conflict resolution. Currently she works as an expert counsel on Kurdish issues. She has a daily Op-Ed column in the newspaper Rudaw which is based in Erbil, Kurdistan, writing about Kurdish politics, history, minority rights, prison literature and women’s issues.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

WORLDS PARTICIPANTS

MARCEL MÖRING

NEEL MUKHERJEE

RUTH OZEKI

Marcel Möring was born in 1957 in Enschede, near the Dutch-German border. In the late sixties his family moved north, to Assen. He studied Dutch literature for two years, then went from one odd job to another. He wrote several plays in those years, producing and directing two of them, and moved to Rotterdam. Möring published his first novel, Mendel, in 1990, to unanimous critical acclaim. His second novel, Het Grote Verlangen (The Great Longing, published in more than fifteen countries) won the AKO Prize, the Dutch equivalent of the Booker Prize. Over 150,000 copies of The Great Longing have been sold in the Netherlands alone. Then came a 500 page novel: In Babylon. This book won two Golden Owls, a Flemish award for the best Dutch / Flemish book, in 1998. It was a success in both the Netherlands (over 100.000 copies sold) and Germany and was published in the UK (Flamingo), France (Flammarion), the USA (William Morrow) and a great number of other countries. DIS (In a Dark Wood), was published in 2006 and was awarded the Bordewijk Prize for the best Dutch novel of 2006. Louteringsberg is his latest book.

Neel Mukherjee was born in Calcutta. He has lived in the UK since 1992. His first novel, A Life Apart, won the Vodafone-Crossword Award in India, the Writers’ Guild of UK Award for best novel, and was shortlisted for the inaugural DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. His second novel, The Lives of Others, is out in May 2014.

Ruth Ozeki is a filmmaker, novelist, and Zen Buddhist priest, and the author of three novels, A Tale for the Time Being, My Year of Meats and All Over Creation. Translated and published in more than fourteen countries, her novels have garnered international critical acclaim for their ability to integrate issues of science, technology, environmental politics and global popular culture into unique hybrid narrative forms. Before turning to fiction writing, Ruth worked in commercial television and media production, including low budget horror, for over a decade, and her independent films, including the awardwinning documentary Halving the Bones, have shown at Sundance and on American public television. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in a number of anthologies, magazines and newspapers, and she has taught and lectured at universities and colleges around the world. A long-time practitioner of meditation, Ruth was ordained as a Soto Zen Buddhist priest in 2010. She and her husband, environmental artist Oliver Kellhammer, divide their time between New York City and Cortes Island, B.C.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

www.ruthozeki.com

MARTIN PICK

JOHN PREBBLE

JOHN SIMMONS

Martin Pick graduated from the University of East Anglia in Social Studies in 1967, and subsequently worked as an editor and publisher with Oxford University Press in India and Pakistan from 1967–72, and with Longman and Macmillan in the UK until 1979. From 1980–94 he ran his own company, Belitha Press, publishing children’s non-fiction. He was also involved in making many documentaries for Channel 4 during the 1980s. He became a literary agent in 1994, and still acts part-time in this capacity. He was a Council member of Minority Rights Group International from 1998–2006. He is also a mentor with the Write to Life group at the Medical Foundation for Victims of Torture, Chair of the Trustees of City and Hackney Mind; and a trustee of Peace Child International. He is Honorary Events Organiser at the Savile Club in London, where he has run an annual UEA/Savile series of literary evenings with Prof. Jon Cook for seven years. He is currently on the Advisory Council for the Sri Lankan Campaign for Peace and Justice, a group seeking to encourage reconciliation in Sri Lanka.

John Prebble is Relationship Manager (Literature) at Arts Council England for the South East. He works with a range of organisations and individuals to support their work and to develop literature in various forms across the region. Prior to joining Arts Council, he was Programme Manager at the Canterbury Festival, where he built up literature programming and writer development through the Canterbury Laureate scheme. He has also worked with the Hay-on-Wye Festival, the Folkestone Literary Festival, and the literature stages at the Latitude Festival. He starts his day with Weetabix and a poem, currently from Modern Poetry in Translation.

John Simmons is author of many books, mainly non-fiction, most recently “Room 121”. He runs “Dark Angels” creative writing courses and is founder director of 26.

www.26fruits.co.uk

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WORLDS PARTICIPANTS

ELIF SHAFAK

SARA SHERIDAN which is given to the best work in mystical literature in Turkey. Her second novel, Sehrin Aynaları (Mirrors of the City), brings together Jewish and Islamic mysticism against a historical setting in the 17th century Mediterranean. Shafak greatly increased her readership with her novel Mahrem (The Gaze), which earned her the “Best Novel-Turkish Writers’ Union Prize” in 2000. Her next novel, Bit Palas (The Flea Palace), has been a bestseller in Turkey and was shortlisted for the Independent Best Fiction Award. 5

Elif Shafak was born in Strasbourg, France, in 1971. She is an awardwinning novelist and the most widely read woman writer in Turkey. Critics have named her as “one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Turkish and world literature”. Her books have been translated into more than thirty languages and she was awarded the honorary distinction of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters. Shafak has published twelve books, eight of which are novels and she writes fiction in both Turkish and English. She blends Western and Eastern traditions of storytelling, bringing out the myriad stories of women, minorities, immigrants, subcultures, youth and global souls. Her work draws on diverse cultures and literary traditions, as well as deep interest in history, philosophy, Sufism, oral culture, and cultural politics. Shafak’s writing breaks down categories, clichés, and cultural ghettoes. She also has a keen eye for black humor. Shafak’s first novel, Pinhan (The Mystic) was awarded the “Rumi Prize” in 1998,

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

Sara Sheridan: Pint-sized, bestselling historical and crime novelist, swot, twitter evangelist, 26 Board member, Society of Authors Committee member, occasional radio reporter, sometime journalist and Agatha Christie obsessive. www.sarasheridan.com

SJÓN

HENRY SUTTON

Rachel Stevens joined the British Council in 2003 as an English Literature graduate to work for the cultural relations think tank, Counterpoint. In 2007 she joined the Literature team and is now Deputy Director responsible for global partnerships and developing literature programmes in South Asia and the Americas working across the sector in literary translation, live literature, creative writing, reader development and publishing.

Henry Sutton was the UEA / New Writing Partnership Creative Writing Fellow in 2008. He has been teaching Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia ever since, and is now a faculty member and the convener of the MA Prose Fiction programme. He is the author of nine works of fiction. His new novel, My Criminal World, explores issues of genre, violence and metafiction and was published by Harvill Secker in early 2013. He has judged numerous literary awards, and is a long-standing literary critic. He lives in Norwich with his family.

Thomas A

RACHEL STEVENS

Sjón began his literary career in Iceland at fifteen, publishing his first poetry collection. In the early 1980s he founded the neo-surrealist group Medúsa, and soon acquired a high profile on the Reykjavík culture scene. He has published seven novels and numerous other poetry collections, and written plays, librettos and picture books for children. His novels include The Whispering Muse, From the Mouth of the Whale, and The Blue Fox (all published in the UK by Telegram); the last was awarded the prestigious Nordic Council Literary Prize and nominated for the 2009 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. In 2001, his longtime collaboration with the Icelandic singer Björk led to an Academy Award Best Song co-nomination (for lyrics to I’ve Seen It All), for the Lars von Trierdirected film Dancer in the Dark. In 2007-08 he held the Samuel Fischer Guest Professorship at the Freie Universität in Berlin, and was a guest of the Berliner Künstlerprogramme in 2010-11. He resides in Reykjavík with his wife and two children.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

WORLDS PARTICIPANTS

REBECCA SWIFT

DAVID SZALAY

GEORGE SZIRTES

Rebecca Swift read English at Oxford University and has since worked as an editor and writer. For seven years she worked at Virago Press, where she first conceived of the idea for The Literary Consultancy. For Chatto & Windus she edited a volume of letters between Bernard Shaw and Margaret Wheeler, Letters from Margaret: The Fascinating Story of Two Babies Swapped at Birth (1992) and Imagining Characters: Six Conversations about Women Writers, a book of conversations between writer A.S. Byatt and psychoanalyst Ignes Sodre (1995). Rebecca has also had poetry published in Virago New Poets (1990), Vintage New Writing 6 (1995), Driftwood, US (2005), Staple (2008), InterlitQ (2010) and Talking Poetry (2011). Rebecca is an Emeritus Trustee of Writers’ Centre Norwich and a Trustee of the Maya Centre. In 1999 she completed an M.A. in Psychoanalytic Studies at the Tavistock Centre in London and UEL. Her thesis title was ARE YOU READING ME? An exploration of the relationship between people who write and those who read them in publishing and related industries.

David Szalay was born in Canada in 1974. His family moved to the UK the following year and he has lived here more or less ever since. After getting a degree at Oxford University he did a number of different jobs – mostly in sales but also some writing for BBC radio – before publishing his first novel, London and the Southeast, in 2008. It won the Betty Trask Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Since then he has published two more novels, The Innocent and Spring. At the moment, he lives partly in London and partly in Hungary.

George Szirtes was a refugee from the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 and came to England as a child together with his parents and younger brother. His first degree was in Fine Art at Leeds and he practised as a painter for some years after. His first book of poetry The Slant Door (1979) was joint winner of the Faber Memorial Prize. In 2004 he won the TS Eliot Prize for his twelfth book of poems, Reel, and was shortlisted for the prize again in 2009 for The Burning of the Books. In between Bloodaxe published his New and Collected Poems (2008). His new book, Bad Machine (2013) is a Poetry Book Society Choice and is again shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize 2013. His books of translation from the Hungarian have won various awards. He has written for children, most recently in In the Land of the Giants (2012) and on visual art. His work has been translated into several languages. He teaches at the University of East Anglia and is married to artist, Clarissa Upchurch. His many translations have won several prizes.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

ELISE VALMORBIDA

EVIE WYLD

SAM WEST

Elise Valmorbida writes books and short stories, teaches creative writing (Arvon and Central Saint Martin’s), leads communications agency worddesign, and is on the board of 26.

Evie Wyld runs Review, a small independent bookshop in Peckham, south London. Her first novel, After the Fire, a Still Small Voice, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and a Betty Trask Award. In 2011 she was listed as one of the Culture Show’s Best New British Novelists. She was also short listed for the Orange Prize for New Writers and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. She is included in Granta’s list of Best of Young British Novelists 2013. Her second novel All the Birds Singing comes out in June 2013 from Jonathan Cape and in 2014 from Pantheon in the US.

Sam West is an English actor and director. He is perhaps best known for his role in the film Howards End and his work on stage (including the award-winning play Enron). He has written essays on Richard II for the Cambridge University Press series Players of Shakespeare, on Hamlet for Michael Dobson’s CUP study Performing Shakespeare’s Tragedies Today and on “Shakespeare and Love” for BBC Radio 3. He has published articles on Harold Pinter and on the Shipping Forecast. He also writes frequently and speaks in public about arts funding. West is an Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Chair of the National Campaign for the Arts and a member of the council of the British Actors’ Union, Equity.

www.word-design.co.uk/ev

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

WORLDS PARTICIPANTS

ZHANG YUERAN

Zhang Yueran is regarded as one of China’s most influential young writers. She has published two short story collections: Sunflower Missing In 1890 (2003) and Ten Tales of Love (2004), and three novels: Distant Cherry (2004), Narcissus (2005) and The Promise Bird (2006), which was named the best saga novel on the 2006 Chinese Novel Ranking List. Each of her books has sold more than 300,000 copies. She has been the chief editor of the prestigious literary magazine Newriting since 2008. She has received many awards, such as the Chinese Press Most Promising New Talent Award (2005), the “MAO-TAI Cup” People’s Literature Prize (2008), and the Spring Literature Prize (2006). She is currently studying for her doctoral degree in Ancient Chinese Literature.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

MEET WRITERS’ CENTRE NORWICH KATY CARR

ANNELLI CLARKE

MARTIN FIGURA

Katy Carr is Communications Director at Writers’ Centre Norwich and manages media, PR, website, data, print, social media and all communications work for the organisation. She is also an advisory board member for The Rialto poetry magazine. Previous jobs have included managing community arts and writing projects and teaching. Katy studied literature and creative writing at the University of East Anglia and enjoys writing, having worked on a collaborative Arts Council-funded play and a radio drama for the BBC. She is currently working on a novel.

Annelli Clarke is Finance Assistant for Writers’ Centre Norwich. She is also a model milliner who uses traditional millinery techniques and processes to produce unique and stylish hats and headwear. Her influences are diverse – twentieth-century classic styles, headwear from other cultures, religions or periods in history, popular culture, sculpture, birds and insects.

Martin Figura is Finance Manager for Writers’ Centre Norwich and is a photographer and poet. His book of photographs This Man’s Army (Dewi Lewis) was published in 1998 and Work – Space – Work (Happen) in 2008. His work has been widely published and exhibited – including at the National Portrait Gallery. He performs widely at events and festivals in the UK and abroad and runs Café Writers, a monthly live literature event in Norwich. His poetry collection Whistle (Arrowhead Press) was published in 2010 and together with the spoken word stage version was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work, going on to tour theatres including the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and the London Roundhouse. Boring the Arse off Young People is published by Nasty Little Press.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

MEET WRITERS’ CENTRE NORWICH CHRIS GRIBBLE

SHENAZ KEDAR

ROXANNE MATTHEWS

Chris Gribble is the Chief Executive of Writers’ Centre Norwich. After completing a PhD in German Poetry and Philosophy at the University of Manchester, Chris worked in publishing then the cultural sector and was the Director of Manchester Poetry Festival and then Manchester Literature Festival. He is on the Board of Directors of ICORN (the International Cities of Refuge Network), sits on the Advisory Group for Manchester University’s Centre for New Writing and the Editorial Board of Jon McGregor’s new journal The Letters Page.

Shenaz Kedar is a Programme Manager at Writers’ Centre Norwich and joined the organisation in June 2006 to launch and manage the Norwich City of Refuge programme. She has over 11 years experience working on community and participation based projects, working with asylum seekers, refugees and migrant workers in a variety of contexts focusing on community cohesion in Portugal, Japan, Greece and Israel.

Roxanne Matthews is the part-time Programme Coordinator on the new Volunteer-led Reading and Writing Programme, working with Norfolk Library and Information Service to engage teenagers in creative reading and writing across the county. Roxanne came to WCN from a background in arts and museum learning, having studied a BA in World Art at UEA and later an MA in the Arts of Europe. She has worked in numerous community settings, run the community learning programme for the Wallace Collection, curated and run learning programmes for a gallery in Tanzania and loves working with young people. She spends her time outside the Writers’ Centre freelancing in museums and running a heritage city learning project, LivingNorwich.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

ALISON McFARLANE

JON MORLEY

LARA NARKIEWICZ

Alison McFarlane is Executive Director at Writers’ Centre Norwich. Alison is currently working on WCN’s business planning, organisational development and reporting structures as well as the change management process as WCN moves towards becoming the National Centre for Writing. Following training as an artist and a few years as a self employed textile designer, Alison spent six years as senior lecturer in the Department of Arts and Humanities at the University of London Goldsmiths’ College. This was followed by ten years at Arts Council England East based in Cambridge, firstly as Head of Visual Arts and finally as Head of Arts. On leaving the Arts Council, Alison worked as CEO of a voluntary organisation in Norwich for before being appointed as Executive Director of the Norfolk & Norwich Festival where she stayed until September 2012. Alison was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2006.

Jon Morley is Programme Director at Writers’ Centre Norwich. He has previously programmed and produced theatre shows, concerts and outdoor arts festivals for The Drum in Birmingham, been a publisher and literary activist in Coventry and taught writing and literature at the University of Warwick, Coventry University and the Workers’ Education Association. He contributed essays to The Oxford Companion to Black British History and has edited the work of numerous Caribbean writers, past and present. His poetry, which won an Eric Gregory Award, has been published in The Allotment (Stride) and Voice Recognition (Bloodaxe), and he has perfomed from his pamphlet and jazz CD Backra Man at festivals in Scotland, Ireland, Trinidad, Slovakia, Portugal and Brazil.

Lara Narkiewicz is Programme Assistant for Writers’ Centre Norwich, providing support to other Programme Team staff on a range of projects. She co-ordinates the WCN Book Club and loves hearing the discussions at their monthly meetings. She completed a BA in French and Hispanic Studies at the University of Sheffield, focusing on Latin American and post-colonial French language literature, and an MA in International Relations and Development Studies at the University of East Anglia. She has taught English to groups with English as a secondary language, and has worked and volunteered for local and international charities and organisations.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

MEET WRITERS’ CENTRE NORWICH SAM RUDDOCK

LAURA STIMSON

LEILA TELFORD

Sam Ruddock joined Writers’ Centre Norwich in February 2009 having previously been a Senior Bookseller with Waterstones. He is now a Programme Manager and looks after the Norwich Showcase, Summer Reads, Norfolk and Norwich Festival, and monthly Salon programmes. Sam’s big love is fiction. He believes passionately in the power of stories to transform our understanding of the world. Outside work he blogs on books and literature at Books, Time, and Silence, and contributes regularly to others, including the popular book collective, Vulpes Libris.

Laura Stimson is a Programme Manager at Writers’ Centre Norwich and formerly co-managed the Writers’ Centre Norwich Live Literature programme. Laura delivers a range of WCN programmes including Worlds. Outside of Writers’ Centre Norwich she produces music and literature events and also performs in loungecore band The Ferries. She is a fiction writer and has studied at Norwich School of Art & Design and University of East Anglia.

Leila Telford is the Resources Manager and part of the Senior Management Team and has been with Writers’ Centre Norwich since it was formed in 2004. For four years she was the Office Manager, leading on administration, finance, development and running several of the original programmes. She worked in the health sector for many years as a GP Surgery Manager and was a mature graduate of the Norwich School of Art and Design (now Norwich University College of the Arts) and its renowned Cultural Studies BA. For three years she was involved in a voluntary capacity in the organisation of the Norwich Fringe Festival, where she also exhibited, and for two years was Project Narrator for the i10 East of England university consortium.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

RICHARD WHITE

ROWAN WHITESIDE

Richard White is Marketing Officer at Writers’ Centre Norwich, and previously worked in Communications with Arts Council England, East. He has (too) many interests, including website development, graphic design and making objects and drawings some might place under the banner of ‘art’. Last and by no means least, he loves reading books. Unlike the rest of his colleagues, he lives outside Norwich, in the city of Ely.

Rowan Whiteside is the Marketing Assistant at Writers’ Centre Norwich, where she helps Katy and Richard promote the myriad of activities that Writers’ Centre Norwich participates in and organises. After completing a BA in English and American Literature at the University of East Anglia in 2011 she worked at Waterstones as the manager of the fiction department. Born in Durban, South Africa, she is now an unabashed supporter of the “Fine City” of Norwich.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

NOTES

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL