Worlds Literature Festival Brochure

CONTENTS

WELCOME TO WORLDS 2012

2

NORWICH UNESCO CITY OF LITERATURE

4

USEFUL INFORMATION

6

MEDIA

7

SCHEDULE

8

UEA CAMPUS MAP

10

PARTICIPANT BIOGRAPHIES

11

MEET WRITERS’ CENTRE NORWICH

26

NOTES

30

1

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

WELCOME TO WORLDS 2012

WELCOME TO WORLDS 2012, WRITERS’ CENTRE NORWICH’S ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL LITERARY SALON, AND WELCOME TO NORWICH, THE NEWEST UNESCO CITY OF LITERATURE AND THE FIRST IN ENGLAND!

Each year, we bring together a number of fiction and non-fiction writers, poets, translators and teachers of writing and literature in order to support an extended conversation over four days about writing as an art and craft. There is a range of public events, readings and celebrations over the course of Worlds, but 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 thoughts, provocations, essays and questions from a selection of the writers present in the room. While the team at Writers’ Centre, along with Jon Cook 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 2011 we enjoyed an amazing Salon on the theme of ‘Writing and Influence’, with provocations from C K Williams, Gwyneth Lewis, Maureen Freely, Chris Merrill, Joyelle McSweeney, Alfred Birnbaum and Natsuki Ikezawa.

You can read more about the 2011 Salon here: www.writerscentrenorwich.org.uk/ joiningtheworldssalon.aspx

Something that emerged strongly from last year’s Salon was a shared interest in the complex relationship between the writer’s sense of self and the literary art work: how that self is recorded, re-recorded, (self) censored and edited in writing and over time.

When we started thinking about this further and added the complexities of geography, nation, genre and what any sort of responsibility to truth might mean to the mix, we realised quickly that there was a whole new Salon discussion there.

The 2012 Salon will comprise a series of conversations about ‘Fiction, Memoir and Truth’, the relationship between biographical truth, its representation in prose or poetry and the idea of memoir. How is the self presented in fiction and memoir, and what does the writer’s choice mean for him or her as a public figure?

What are the alternative traditions in different literatures? How might the act of translation sit between memoir and fiction?

Of course, the writers commissioned to offer provocations – think pieces, short essays – might take us in very different directions indeed. 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 first day’s Salon sessions will be led by Dame Gillian Beer and John Coetzee. The second day will feature contributions from Gail Jones and Alvin Pang. Chika Unigwe will provide the final provocation on the third day of the Salon, and George Szirtes will help us collect some summary thoughts and impressions during the final session. I’m delighted to say that Jon Cook will be acting as Chair of the Salon once again.

One of last year’s participating writers noted that: “Worlds felt like a mental and creative exfoliation of the mind and soul; it was utterly rewarding as a writer and therefore impacted directly on my writing, and most importantly, on how I go forward as a writer.”

Another participant remarked: “Never have I felt so stimulated by a series of conversations, the substance of which will certainly shape my work. Indeed I embarked on a new long poem, inspired by Worlds, which has already taken me to heretofore imagined places. I can’t wait to find out where it will go next.”

Landmarks of Norwich by Martin Figura

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

CHRIS GRIBBLE WRITERS’ CENTRE NORWICH

The Forum, Norwich courtesy of The Forum

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

2

3

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

WELCOME TO WORLDS 2012

WELCOME TO WORLDS 2012, WRITERS’ CENTRE NORWICH’S ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL LITERARY SALON, AND WELCOME TO NORWICH, THE NEWEST UNESCO CITY OF LITERATURE AND THE FIRST IN ENGLAND!

Each year, we bring together a number of fiction and non-fiction writers, poets, translators and teachers of writing and literature in order to support an extended conversation over four days about writing as an art and craft. There is a range of public events, readings and celebrations over the course of Worlds, but 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 thoughts, provocations, essays and questions from a selection of the writers present in the room. While the team at Writers’ Centre, along with Jon Cook 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 2011 we enjoyed an amazing Salon on the theme of ‘Writing and Influence’, with provocations from C K Williams, Gwyneth Lewis, Maureen Freely, Chris Merrill, Joyelle McSweeney, Alfred Birnbaum and Natsuki Ikezawa.

You can read more about the 2011 Salon here: www.writerscentrenorwich.org.uk/ joiningtheworldssalon.aspx

Something that emerged strongly from last year’s Salon was a shared interest in the complex relationship between the writer’s sense of self and the literary art work: how that self is recorded, re-recorded, (self) censored and edited in writing and over time.

When we started thinking about this further and added the complexities of geography, nation, genre and what any sort of responsibility to truth might mean to the mix, we realised quickly that there was a whole new Salon discussion there.

The 2012 Salon will comprise a series of conversations about ‘Fiction, Memoir and Truth’, the relationship between biographical truth, its representation in prose or poetry and the idea of memoir. How is the self presented in fiction and memoir, and what does the writer’s choice mean for him or her as a public figure?

What are the alternative traditions in different literatures? How might the act of translation sit between memoir and fiction?

Of course, the writers commissioned to offer provocations – think pieces, short essays – might take us in very different directions indeed. 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 first day’s Salon sessions will be led by Dame Gillian Beer and John Coetzee. The second day will feature contributions from Gail Jones and Alvin Pang. Chika Unigwe will provide the final provocation on the third day of the Salon, and George Szirtes will help us collect some summary thoughts and impressions during the final session. I’m delighted to say that Jon Cook will be acting as Chair of the Salon once again.

One of last year’s participating writers noted that: “Worlds felt like a mental and creative exfoliation of the mind and soul; it was utterly rewarding as a writer and therefore impacted directly on my writing, and most importantly, on how I go forward as a writer.”

Another participant remarked: “Never have I felt so stimulated by a series of conversations, the substance of which will certainly shape my work. Indeed I embarked on a new long poem, inspired by Worlds, which has already taken me to heretofore imagined places. I can’t wait to find out where it will go next.”

Landmarks of Norwich by Martin Figura

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

CHRIS GRIBBLE WRITERS’ CENTRE NORWICH

The Forum, Norwich courtesy of The Forum

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

2

3

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

NORWICH UNESCO CITY OF LITERATURE

IN MAY 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.

2 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 first 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), of which Ian McEwan was the first graduate. In 2006, Norwich became

the first (and is still 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

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 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 International Centre for Writing (ICW). The ICW, 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

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,

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 of 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.

7 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 genuine radical, wrote for the causes of gender and racial equality, personal responsibility, fair economics, evidencebased science and campaign journalism. Celebrated polymath Thomas Browne, prison reformer Elizabeth Fry and, more recently, humorist Stephen Fry, have all called Norwich their home.

8 A CITY OF REFUGE

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 twenty-second anniversary in 2012.

Within an hour of Norwich are a multitude of other literature festivals, including the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, Poetry-next-the-Sea and Cambridge Wordfest.

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.

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 the likes of Molly Naylor, Martin Figura, Worlds writers, 2009 by Facundo Arrizabalaga

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

4

5

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

NORWICH UNESCO CITY OF LITERATURE

IN MAY 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.

2 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 first 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), of which Ian McEwan was the first graduate. In 2006, Norwich became

the first (and is still 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

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 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 International Centre for Writing (ICW). The ICW, 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

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,

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 of 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.

7 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 genuine radical, wrote for the causes of gender and racial equality, personal responsibility, fair economics, evidencebased science and campaign journalism. Celebrated polymath Thomas Browne, prison reformer Elizabeth Fry and, more recently, humorist Stephen Fry, have all called Norwich their home.

8 A CITY OF REFUGE

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 twenty-second anniversary in 2012.

Within an hour of Norwich are a multitude of other literature festivals, including the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, Poetry-next-the-Sea and Cambridge Wordfest.

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.

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 the likes of Molly Naylor, Martin Figura, Worlds writers, 2009 by Facundo Arrizabalaga

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

4

5

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

USEFUL INFORMATION

YOUR ACCOMMODATION AT BROADVIEW LODGE Your accommodation is in Broadview Lodge, at the heart of the picturesque UEA campus with easy access to campus shops, restaurants, banks and bars. Check-in is from 2pm on the day of arrival.

The Broadview Lodge reception is manned from 8am – 10pm each day.

ACCESSING THE INTERNET If you would like to access the internet from your room, you can purchase BT Openzone cards from the reception. Computers with internet access will be available in the Council Chamber (Salon venue) between 8am and 6pm each day and are free to use. Please note that these will not be linked to a printer.

CATERING DURING WORLDS

MEDIA

LEAVING NORWICH

USEFUL PHONE NUMBERS

Check-out time on the day of your departure is 10am. A £10 charge for late check-outs may apply. If you have a car parked at UEA, you can validate your parking ticket at the Broadview Lodge reception. Alternatively, there is a validating machine on the wall of the accommodation corridor.

Writers’ Centre Norwich (between 9am – 5pm): (0044) 1603 877177

If you require a taxi to the train station or airport, Writers’ Centre Norwich would be happy to organise this for you. Please ask a member of the WCN team.

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.

Broadview Lodge reception: (0044) 1603 591918 Security Lodge / First Aid: (0044) 1603 592352

AUDIO RECORDING

Security (emergencies only): (0044) 1603 592222

Writers’ Centre Norwich may ask to 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 exclude the Salon discussion, which will not be recorded for public use.

In a medical emergency: 999 To urgently contact the Worlds team:

The Salon by Martin Figura

Chris Gribble: (0044) 1603 670997

Images, video and audio may be shared following Worlds via www.writerscentrenorwich.org.uk www.newwriting.net

Mitchell Albert: (0044) 7746217193

TWITTER All meals are provided for the duration of your stay. Details of lunches and dinners during the week can be found in the schedule.

Laura Stimson: (0044) 7904 401183

If you tweet we are using the hashtag #worlds12 for this event.

English and Continental breakfast for guests staying in Broadview Lodge is served from 7.30am each morning in the Zest restaurant. To receive your breakfast, simply present the cashier with your room key-card. INTO and Zest are marked on the campus map (page 10).

The Salon by Martin Figura

BOOKS Books by authors appearing at Worlds, as well as a wide range of academic and popular titles, will be stocked by the Waterstones bookshop on UEA Campus.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

6

7

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

USEFUL INFORMATION

YOUR ACCOMMODATION AT BROADVIEW LODGE Your accommodation is in Broadview Lodge, at the heart of the picturesque UEA campus with easy access to campus shops, restaurants, banks and bars. Check-in is from 2pm on the day of arrival.

The Broadview Lodge reception is manned from 8am – 10pm each day.

ACCESSING THE INTERNET If you would like to access the internet from your room, you can purchase BT Openzone cards from the reception. Computers with internet access will be available in the Council Chamber (Salon venue) between 8am and 6pm each day and are free to use. Please note that these will not be linked to a printer.

CATERING DURING WORLDS

MEDIA

LEAVING NORWICH

USEFUL PHONE NUMBERS

Check-out time on the day of your departure is 10am. A £10 charge for late check-outs may apply. If you have a car parked at UEA, you can validate your parking ticket at the Broadview Lodge reception. Alternatively, there is a validating machine on the wall of the accommodation corridor.

Writers’ Centre Norwich (between 9am – 5pm): (0044) 1603 877177

If you require a taxi to the train station or airport, Writers’ Centre Norwich would be happy to organise this for you. Please ask a member of the WCN team.

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.

Broadview Lodge reception: (0044) 1603 591918 Security Lodge / First Aid: (0044) 1603 592352

AUDIO RECORDING

Security (emergencies only): (0044) 1603 592222

Writers’ Centre Norwich may ask to 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 exclude the Salon discussion, which will not be recorded for public use.

In a medical emergency: 999 To urgently contact the Worlds team:

The Salon by Martin Figura

Chris Gribble: (0044) 1603 670997

Images, video and audio may be shared following Worlds via www.writerscentrenorwich.org.uk www.newwriting.net

Mitchell Albert: (0044) 7746217193

TWITTER All meals are provided for the duration of your stay. Details of lunches and dinners during the week can be found in the schedule.

Laura Stimson: (0044) 7904 401183

If you tweet we are using the hashtag #worlds12 for this event.

English and Continental breakfast for guests staying in Broadview Lodge is served from 7.30am each morning in the Zest restaurant. To receive your breakfast, simply present the cashier with your room key-card. INTO and Zest are marked on the campus map (page 10).

The Salon by Martin Figura

BOOKS Books by authors appearing at Worlds, as well as a wide range of academic and popular titles, will be stocked by the Waterstones bookshop on UEA Campus.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

6

7

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

SCHEDULE

MONDAY 18 JUNE

TUESDAY 19 JUNE

WEDNESDAY 20 JUNE

THURSDAY 21 JUNE

FRIDAY 22 JUNE

7 – 8.30pm UEA Drama Studio AN EVENING WITH DAME GILLIAN BEER, JO SHAPCOTT AND JEANETTE WINTERSON Three inspirational writers discuss their work and the relationships between fiction, memoir, and the self. Curated by Dame Gillian Beer, and featuring two writers at the peak of their careers, this evening promises to be an inspirational and unforgettable experience.

9.30am – 1pm UEA Council Chamber SALON DAY ONE: WITH PROVOCATIONS FROM DAME GILLIAN BEER AND J M COETZEE Followed by LUNCH

9.30am – 1pm UEA Council Chamber SALON DAY TWO: WITH PROVOCATIONS FROM GAIL JONES AND ALVIN PANG Followed by LUNCH

12.30 – 2.30pm (venue to be confirmed) LUNCH

9.30am – 1pm UEA Council Chamber SALON DAY THREE: WITH PROVOCATIONS FROM CHIKA UNIGWE AND PLENARY SESSION Followed by LUNCH

GETTING THERE: Representatives from Writers’ Centre Norwich will meet you at 6.45pm at the Broadview Lodge reception to escort you to this event.

9pm The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts Restaurant DINNER GETTING THERE: Representatives from Writers’ Centre Norwich will escort you to dinner following that evening’s event.

GETTING THERE: Representatives from Writers’ Centre Norwich will meet you at 9am at the Broadview Lodge reception to escort you to the Salon venue, where tea and coffee will be served.

FOR INTERNATIONAL GUESTS: Following the Salon from 1.30pm a member of the finance team will be present to process any outstanding travel claims. Please bring your receipts for travel and expenses form with you if you would like to process a claim.

2 – 3.30pm UEA Drama Studio AFTERNOON READS: LANGUAGE & EXPERIMENT The first of the week’s reading series features Joe Dunthorne (UK), Alvin Pang (Singapore), Manon Uphoff (Netherlands), Yoko Tawada (Japan) and Valerie Henitiuk (British Centre for Literary Translation) as host.

GETTING THERE: Representatives from Writers’ Centre Norwich will escort you to the Drama Studio following the Salon lunch.

7.30 – 9.30pm Norwich Playhouse AN EVENING WITH J M COETZEE, ANNA FUNDER AND TIM PARKS Three of the finest fiction and nonfiction authors read from their work at what promises to be an unforgettable evening showcasing the best in contemporary literature.

GETTING THERE: Representatives from Writers’ Centre Norwich will meet you at 9am at the Broadview Lodge reception to escort you to the Salon venue, where tea and coffee will be served.

2 – 3.30pm UEA Drama Studio AFTERNOON READS: TRUTHS Featuring Eleanor Catton (New Zealand), Goretti Kyomuhendo (Uganda), Frances Leviston (UK), Alex Miller (Australia), Chika Unigwe (Nigeria) and hosted by Mitchell Albert of WCN. GETTING THERE: Representatives from Writers’ Centre Norwich will escort you to the Drama Studio following the Salon lunch.

6.30 – 7.30pm Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library WORLD VOICES WITH TEJU COLE AND VESNA GOLDSWORTHY In celebration of Refugee Week, Teju Cole and Vesna Goldsworthy explore ideas of exile, displacement and acceptance in their writing.

GETTING THERE: Representatives from Writers’ Centre Norwich will meet you at the Broadview Lodge reception at 12pm to escort you to lunch.

3 – 5.30pm Starting at: Norwich Cathedral, Tombland NORWICH UNESCO CITY OF LITERATURE TOUR Get to know England’s first UNESCO City of Literature with a tour of some of its literary heritage sites.

6pm The Last Wine Bar DINNER 7.30 – 8.30pm Norwich Playhouse AN EVENING WITH MICHAEL ONDAATJE AND KAMILA SHAMSIE Worlds Keynote, with Michael Ondaatje and Kamila Shamsie sharing an evening of readings and conversation.

In association with Refugee Week.

FOR INTERNATIONAL GUESTS: Following the Salon from 1.30pm a member of the finance team will be present to process any outstanding travel claims. Please bring your receipts for travel and expenses form with you if you would like to process a claim.

2 – 3.30pm UEA Drama Studio AFTERNOON READS: STRANGE LANDS This afternoon reading explores themes of loss, otherness and home.

Featuring Catherine Cole (Australia), Jonty Driver (UK), Samantha Harvey (UK), Robin Hemley (US), Sjón (Iceland) and hosted by Kate Griffin of the BCLT.

7.30 – 9pm UEA Drama Studio LAUNCH OF GRANTA 119: BRITAIN In celebration of Granta Magazine’s launch of Granta 119: Britain.

Three contributors, Edmund Clark, Rachel Seiffert and Andrea Stuart, will explore British identity through readings, conversation and a Q&A session chaired by Granta’s editor, John Freeman.

9pm Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts Restaurant DINNER: IN CELEBRATION OF NORWICH UNESCO CITY OF LITERATURE To mark the end of Worlds and celebrate Norwich’s new status as a City of Literature.

GETTING BACK: If you would like to return to your accommodation following this event then someone from Writers’ Centre Norwich would be happy to arrange a taxi for you.

GETTING THERE: Representatives from Writers’ Centre Norwich will meet you at the Broadview Lodge reception at 5.45pm to escort you to the event.

8pm Pulse Restaurant DINNER

GETTING THERE: Representatives from Writers’ Centre Norwich will meet you at 6.45pm at the Broadview Lodge reception and escort you to the event.

9pm The Last Wine Bar DINNER Worlds writers, 2009 by Facundo Arrizabalaga

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

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9

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

SCHEDULE

MONDAY 18 JUNE

TUESDAY 19 JUNE

WEDNESDAY 20 JUNE

THURSDAY 21 JUNE

FRIDAY 22 JUNE

7 – 8.30pm UEA Drama Studio AN EVENING WITH DAME GILLIAN BEER, JO SHAPCOTT AND JEANETTE WINTERSON Three inspirational writers discuss their work and the relationships between fiction, memoir, and the self. Curated by Dame Gillian Beer, and featuring two writers at the peak of their careers, this evening promises to be an inspirational and unforgettable experience.

9.30am – 1pm UEA Council Chamber SALON DAY ONE: WITH PROVOCATIONS FROM DAME GILLIAN BEER AND J M COETZEE Followed by LUNCH

9.30am – 1pm UEA Council Chamber SALON DAY TWO: WITH PROVOCATIONS FROM GAIL JONES AND ALVIN PANG Followed by LUNCH

12.30 – 2.30pm (venue to be confirmed) LUNCH

9.30am – 1pm UEA Council Chamber SALON DAY THREE: WITH PROVOCATIONS FROM CHIKA UNIGWE AND PLENARY SESSION Followed by LUNCH

GETTING THERE: Representatives from Writers’ Centre Norwich will meet you at 6.45pm at the Broadview Lodge reception to escort you to this event.

9pm The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts Restaurant DINNER GETTING THERE: Representatives from Writers’ Centre Norwich will escort you to dinner following that evening’s event.

GETTING THERE: Representatives from Writers’ Centre Norwich will meet you at 9am at the Broadview Lodge reception to escort you to the Salon venue, where tea and coffee will be served.

FOR INTERNATIONAL GUESTS: Following the Salon from 1.30pm a member of the finance team will be present to process any outstanding travel claims. Please bring your receipts for travel and expenses form with you if you would like to process a claim.

2 – 3.30pm UEA Drama Studio AFTERNOON READS: LANGUAGE & EXPERIMENT The first of the week’s reading series features Joe Dunthorne (UK), Alvin Pang (Singapore), Manon Uphoff (Netherlands), Yoko Tawada (Japan) and Valerie Henitiuk (British Centre for Literary Translation) as host.

GETTING THERE: Representatives from Writers’ Centre Norwich will escort you to the Drama Studio following the Salon lunch.

7.30 – 9.30pm Norwich Playhouse AN EVENING WITH J M COETZEE, ANNA FUNDER AND TIM PARKS Three of the finest fiction and nonfiction authors read from their work at what promises to be an unforgettable evening showcasing the best in contemporary literature.

GETTING THERE: Representatives from Writers’ Centre Norwich will meet you at 9am at the Broadview Lodge reception to escort you to the Salon venue, where tea and coffee will be served.

2 – 3.30pm UEA Drama Studio AFTERNOON READS: TRUTHS Featuring Eleanor Catton (New Zealand), Goretti Kyomuhendo (Uganda), Frances Leviston (UK), Alex Miller (Australia), Chika Unigwe (Nigeria) and hosted by Mitchell Albert of WCN. GETTING THERE: Representatives from Writers’ Centre Norwich will escort you to the Drama Studio following the Salon lunch.

6.30 – 7.30pm Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library WORLD VOICES WITH TEJU COLE AND VESNA GOLDSWORTHY In celebration of Refugee Week, Teju Cole and Vesna Goldsworthy explore ideas of exile, displacement and acceptance in their writing.

GETTING THERE: Representatives from Writers’ Centre Norwich will meet you at the Broadview Lodge reception at 12pm to escort you to lunch.

3 – 5.30pm Starting at: Norwich Cathedral, Tombland NORWICH UNESCO CITY OF LITERATURE TOUR Get to know England’s first UNESCO City of Literature with a tour of some of its literary heritage sites.

6pm The Last Wine Bar DINNER 7.30 – 8.30pm Norwich Playhouse AN EVENING WITH MICHAEL ONDAATJE AND KAMILA SHAMSIE Worlds Keynote, with Michael Ondaatje and Kamila Shamsie sharing an evening of readings and conversation.

In association with Refugee Week.

FOR INTERNATIONAL GUESTS: Following the Salon from 1.30pm a member of the finance team will be present to process any outstanding travel claims. Please bring your receipts for travel and expenses form with you if you would like to process a claim.

2 – 3.30pm UEA Drama Studio AFTERNOON READS: STRANGE LANDS This afternoon reading explores themes of loss, otherness and home.

Featuring Catherine Cole (Australia), Jonty Driver (UK), Samantha Harvey (UK), Robin Hemley (US), Sjón (Iceland) and hosted by Kate Griffin of the BCLT.

7.30 – 9pm UEA Drama Studio LAUNCH OF GRANTA 119: BRITAIN In celebration of Granta Magazine’s launch of Granta 119: Britain.

Three contributors, Edmund Clark, Rachel Seiffert and Andrea Stuart, will explore British identity through readings, conversation and a Q&A session chaired by Granta’s editor, John Freeman.

9pm Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts Restaurant DINNER: IN CELEBRATION OF NORWICH UNESCO CITY OF LITERATURE To mark the end of Worlds and celebrate Norwich’s new status as a City of Literature.

GETTING BACK: If you would like to return to your accommodation following this event then someone from Writers’ Centre Norwich would be happy to arrange a taxi for you.

GETTING THERE: Representatives from Writers’ Centre Norwich will meet you at the Broadview Lodge reception at 5.45pm to escort you to the event.

8pm Pulse Restaurant DINNER

GETTING THERE: Representatives from Writers’ Centre Norwich will meet you at 6.45pm at the Broadview Lodge reception and escort you to the event.

9pm The Last Wine Bar DINNER Worlds writers, 2009 by Facundo Arrizabalaga

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

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WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

UEA CAMPUS

WORLDS 2012 PARTICIPANTS

JEFFREY ANGLES

CHRISTOPHER BIGSBY

Gillian Beer is King Edward VII Professor Emeritus at the University of Cambridge, and was President of Clare Hall College there from 1994–2001. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Literature, a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an Honorary International Member of the American Philosophical Society as well as past President of the British Comparative Literature Association and of the British Literature and Science Society. In 1998 she was made Dame Commander for services to English literature. She has twice judged the Man Booker Prize for fiction. From 2009–11 she was the invited Andrew W. Mellon Senior Scholar at the Yale Center for British Art. She holds honorary doctorates from Oxford University, University of London and the Sorbonne, and has been awarded medals from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. The General Editor of the series Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth Century Literature and Culture, she has also written studies of Charles Darwin and Virginia Woolf. She is, at present, finishing a study of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books in the context of nineteenthcentury intellectual controversies.

Her collected and annotated edition of Carroll’s poetry is forthcoming from Penguin Classics in July 2012.

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.

Western Michigan University

GILLIAN BEER

Jeffrey Angles is an associate professor of Japanese and translation at Western Michigan University. He is the author of the academic study Writing the Love of Boys (University of Minnesota Press, 2011). He is also an award-winning translator who has translated dozens of Japan’s most important modern writers. In particular, he focuses on Japanese modernist texts and contemporary poetry, which he feels have been largely ignored by the English-speaking world. His recent translations include Killing Kanoko: Selected Poems of Ito¯ Hiromi (Action Books, 2009); Forest of Eyes: Selected Poems of Tada Chimako (University of California Press, 2010); and numerous other works of prose and poetry.

In 2008 he was awarded grants from both the PEN American Center and the National Endowment for the Arts (US). He is also the recipient of the Japan–US Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature (2009) and the Landon Translation Prize from the American Academy of Poets (2010). He also writes poetry, primarily in Japanese, his second language.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

10

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WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

UEA CAMPUS

WORLDS 2012 PARTICIPANTS

JEFFREY ANGLES

CHRISTOPHER BIGSBY

Gillian Beer is King Edward VII Professor Emeritus at the University of Cambridge, and was President of Clare Hall College there from 1994–2001. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Literature, a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an Honorary International Member of the American Philosophical Society as well as past President of the British Comparative Literature Association and of the British Literature and Science Society. In 1998 she was made Dame Commander for services to English literature. She has twice judged the Man Booker Prize for fiction. From 2009–11 she was the invited Andrew W. Mellon Senior Scholar at the Yale Center for British Art. She holds honorary doctorates from Oxford University, University of London and the Sorbonne, and has been awarded medals from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. The General Editor of the series Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth Century Literature and Culture, she has also written studies of Charles Darwin and Virginia Woolf. She is, at present, finishing a study of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books in the context of nineteenthcentury intellectual controversies.

Her collected and annotated edition of Carroll’s poetry is forthcoming from Penguin Classics in July 2012.

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.

Western Michigan University

GILLIAN BEER

Jeffrey Angles is an associate professor of Japanese and translation at Western Michigan University. He is the author of the academic study Writing the Love of Boys (University of Minnesota Press, 2011). He is also an award-winning translator who has translated dozens of Japan’s most important modern writers. In particular, he focuses on Japanese modernist texts and contemporary poetry, which he feels have been largely ignored by the English-speaking world. His recent translations include Killing Kanoko: Selected Poems of Ito¯ Hiromi (Action Books, 2009); Forest of Eyes: Selected Poems of Tada Chimako (University of California Press, 2010); and numerous other works of prose and poetry.

In 2008 he was awarded grants from both the PEN American Center and the National Endowment for the Arts (US). He is also the recipient of the Japan–US Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature (2009) and the Landon Translation Prize from the American Academy of Poets (2010). He also writes poetry, primarily in Japanese, his second language.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

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WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

WORLDS 2012 PARTICIPANTS

ELEANOR CATTON

Jean Boase-Beier is Professor of Literature and Translation at the University of East Anglia, where she has taught Literary Translation, Linguistics, Literature and Stylistics since 1991. She runs the MA in Literary Translation, is an Executive Committee member of the British Comparative Literature Association (and organiser of its John Dryden Translation Competition), and is also a translator of poetry. Her most recent academic book, A Critical Introduction to Translation Studies (Continuum, 2011), considers translation theory and practice. Her other recent publications include various articles on stylistics and translation and on the translation of poetry, as well as on translating Paul Celan. She is also the editor of Visible Poets, a series of bilingual poetry books from Arc Publications.

Antonia Byatt is Director (Literature) at Arts Council England, and also holds the international brief. Before joining Arts Council England, she 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, she was Head of Literature at Southbank Centre, which involved overseeing a literature programme of around 130 events a year as well as overall management of the poetry library. She is a governor of the Bishopsgate Institute and, since 2008, has been Governor of New Buckinghamshire University.

Eleanor Catton was born in Canada and raised in New Zealand. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she taught creative writing as an adjunct professor. She wrote her debut novel, The Rehearsal, when she was twenty-two years old.

First published in New Zealand by Victoria University Press, it went on to receive international prizes and acclaim, and was long-listed for the 2010 Orange Prize, the Betty Trask Award and the Amazon.ca First Novel Award. It has now been translated into twelve languages. The Rehearsal, which charts the aftermath of a sex scandal at a girls’ high school, has been described as ‘a Russian doll of a novel’ and ‘a glimpse into the future of the novel itself’. Her forthcoming second novel, which she describes as an ‘astrological murder mystery’, takes place during the New Zealand gold rushes of the 1860s. In 2012 she will be Writer-in-Residence at the University of Auckland. She lives in Wellington, New Zealand.

EDMUND CLARK

J M COETZEE

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

12

CATHERINE COLE

Edmund Clark is best known for his imagery exploring the consequences of control and incarceration.

His monographs include Still Life Killing Time (2007) and Guantánamo: If The Light Goes Out (2010), which won Best Book at the New York Photo Awards in 2011 and was chosen as one of the best books of 2011 at the International Photobook Festival in Kassel, Germany. He was nominated International Photographer of the Year in 2010, and awarded the Royal Photographic Society Hood Medal in 2011.

J M Coetzee was born in South Africa in 1940, and educated in South Africa and the US. Amongst his academic appointments have been professorships at the University of Cape Town and the University of Chicago. He is the author of twelve works of fiction, as well as of memoirs, criticism, and translation. Among the awards he has won are the Booker Prize (twice) and, in 2003, the Nobel Prize for Literature. Since 2002 he has lived in Australia, where he is Professor of Literature at the University of Adelaide.

Bert Nienhaus

ANTONIA BYATT

Robert Catto

JEAN BOASE-BEIER

13

Catherine Cole is Professor of Creative Writing and Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Creative Arts, Wollongong University, Australia.

She has extensive academic, writing and industry connections in the fields of creative practice and literature, and is currently leading a research project on creative communities, which examines the role of UNESCO Cities of Literature. She works with writers and writers’ associations in Vietnam, particularly on the promotion of contemporary Vietnamese literature worldwide. She is also a project coordinator and journal editor for the Australian Literary Compendium, a co-project with ABC Radio National that develops web-based resources on Australian literature for schools and universities in Australia and internationally. She is a member of the Australian Research Council’s Excellence in Research Australia 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. She has been a resident of the Keesing Studio, Cité International des Arts in Paris, and an Asialink writer-in-residence in Hanoi, Vietnam.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

WORLDS 2012 PARTICIPANTS

ELEANOR CATTON

Jean Boase-Beier is Professor of Literature and Translation at the University of East Anglia, where she has taught Literary Translation, Linguistics, Literature and Stylistics since 1991. She runs the MA in Literary Translation, is an Executive Committee member of the British Comparative Literature Association (and organiser of its John Dryden Translation Competition), and is also a translator of poetry. Her most recent academic book, A Critical Introduction to Translation Studies (Continuum, 2011), considers translation theory and practice. Her other recent publications include various articles on stylistics and translation and on the translation of poetry, as well as on translating Paul Celan. She is also the editor of Visible Poets, a series of bilingual poetry books from Arc Publications.

Antonia Byatt is Director (Literature) at Arts Council England, and also holds the international brief. Before joining Arts Council England, she 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, she was Head of Literature at Southbank Centre, which involved overseeing a literature programme of around 130 events a year as well as overall management of the poetry library. She is a governor of the Bishopsgate Institute and, since 2008, has been Governor of New Buckinghamshire University.

Eleanor Catton was born in Canada and raised in New Zealand. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she taught creative writing as an adjunct professor. She wrote her debut novel, The Rehearsal, when she was twenty-two years old.

First published in New Zealand by Victoria University Press, it went on to receive international prizes and acclaim, and was long-listed for the 2010 Orange Prize, the Betty Trask Award and the Amazon.ca First Novel Award. It has now been translated into twelve languages. The Rehearsal, which charts the aftermath of a sex scandal at a girls’ high school, has been described as ‘a Russian doll of a novel’ and ‘a glimpse into the future of the novel itself’. Her forthcoming second novel, which she describes as an ‘astrological murder mystery’, takes place during the New Zealand gold rushes of the 1860s. In 2012 she will be Writer-in-Residence at the University of Auckland. She lives in Wellington, New Zealand.

EDMUND CLARK

J M COETZEE

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

12

CATHERINE COLE

Edmund Clark is best known for his imagery exploring the consequences of control and incarceration.

His monographs include Still Life Killing Time (2007) and Guantánamo: If The Light Goes Out (2010), which won Best Book at the New York Photo Awards in 2011 and was chosen as one of the best books of 2011 at the International Photobook Festival in Kassel, Germany. He was nominated International Photographer of the Year in 2010, and awarded the Royal Photographic Society Hood Medal in 2011.

J M Coetzee was born in South Africa in 1940, and educated in South Africa and the US. Amongst his academic appointments have been professorships at the University of Cape Town and the University of Chicago. He is the author of twelve works of fiction, as well as of memoirs, criticism, and translation. Among the awards he has won are the Booker Prize (twice) and, in 2003, the Nobel Prize for Literature. Since 2002 he has lived in Australia, where he is Professor of Literature at the University of Adelaide.

Bert Nienhaus

ANTONIA BYATT

Robert Catto

JEAN BOASE-BEIER

13

Catherine Cole is Professor of Creative Writing and Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Creative Arts, Wollongong University, Australia.

She has extensive academic, writing and industry connections in the fields of creative practice and literature, and is currently leading a research project on creative communities, which examines the role of UNESCO Cities of Literature. She works with writers and writers’ associations in Vietnam, particularly on the promotion of contemporary Vietnamese literature worldwide. She is also a project coordinator and journal editor for the Australian Literary Compendium, a co-project with ABC Radio National that develops web-based resources on Australian literature for schools and universities in Australia and internationally. She is a member of the Australian Research Council’s Excellence in Research Australia 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. She has been a resident of the Keesing Studio, Cité International des Arts in Paris, and an Asialink writer-in-residence in Hanoi, Vietnam.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

WORLDS 2012 PARTICIPANTS

ANDREW COWAN

JILL DAWSON

JONTY DRIVER

JOE DUNTHORNE

Teju Cole is a writer, art historian, street photographer and Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at Bard College.

He was born in the US to Nigerian parents. Raised in Nigeria, he currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. He is the author of two books: a novella, Every Day Is for the Thief, and a novel, Open City, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award, the New York City Book Award for Fiction and the Rosenthal Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters; it was also shortlisted for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award and the New York Public Library Young Lions Award. He has been a contributor to The New York Times, Qarrtsiluni, Chimurenga, The New Yorker, Transition, Tin House, A Public Space, and other publications. He is currently at work on a book-length, non-fiction narrative of Lagos, and on a Twitter project called small fates.

Jon Cook is Professor of Literature at the University of East Anglia and Chair of the Arts Council in the East of England. 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 New Writing Worlds programme, and has hosted and chaired the Salon of international writers since its inception in 2005.

Andrew Cowan is Director of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. Before joining the faculty in 2004 he was twice a Royal Literary Fund writing fellow at UEA and a longstanding tutor for the Arvon Foundation. He is the author of five novels, published in twelve languages; they include Pig, which was long-listed for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for five other literary awards, and won a Betty Trask Award, the Authors’ Club First Novel Award, the Ruth Hadden Memorial Prize, a Scottish Arts Council Book Award and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award.

Common Ground and Crustaceans both received competitive 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 by Pearson Longman in 2011. His new novel, Worthless Men, will be published

by Sceptre in 2013.

Jill Dawson is the author of seven novels and the editor of six anthologies of poetry and short stories. She was twice nominated for the Orange Prize. Her novels include Fred & Edie, Wild Boy, Watch Me Disappear, The Great Lover, and Lucky Bunny, all published by Sceptre.

Lucky Bunny is currently being adapted for screen by the BBC. She holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Anglia Ruskin, Cambridge, has won awards for poetry, short stories and screenplays and held many fellowships, including the Creative Writing Fellowship at the University of East Anglia and the British Council Writing Fellowship at Amherst College, Massachusetts. She currently mentors new and emerging writers under a scheme she founded (see www.gold-dust.org.uk) and tutors creative writing for the UEA/Guardian master classes.

C J (‘Jonty’) Driver is a poet, novelist, and essayist. For many years a teacher – in Africa, Hong Kong and England – he is now a full-time writer living in East Sussex and travelling regularly to his country of birth, South Africa.

President of the National Union of South African Students in 1963 and 1964, he was held in solitary confinement by the South African police in 1964 and was later refused renewal of passport while a postgraduate student at Oxford; he remained a prohibited immigrant in South Africa until 1991. He has been an honorary senior lecturer in the School of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia since 2007, and was a judge of the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2007 and 2008. He was also a Research Fellow at the University of York in 1976, and more recently has held residencies at the Liguria Study Centre in Bogliasco; the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire; and the Hawthornden Writers’ Retreat. He has published five novels (the first four of which have recently been re-issued by Faber Finds), a biography, and six books of poetry – the most recent of which is So Far: Selected Poems 1964–2000.

His Rhymes for the Grandchildren: Moose, Mouse and Other Rhymes, was published by the Peridot Press in November 2011.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

14

15

Angus Muir

JON COOK

Ellen Elmendorp

TEJU COLE

Joe Dunthorne was born and raised in Swansea. His debut novel Submarine won the Curtis Brown Prize, was translated into twelve languages and adapted to film by Richard Ayoade, and his second novel, Wild Abandon (Hamish Hamilton), was published in 2011. He is a poet as well, with a pamphlet published by Faber and Faber. He co-organises a monthly night of literary miscellany, Homework, in East London, and is a striker for the England Writers’ Football Team.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

WORLDS 2012 PARTICIPANTS

ANDREW COWAN

JILL DAWSON

JONTY DRIVER

JOE DUNTHORNE

Teju Cole is a writer, art historian, street photographer and Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at Bard College.

He was born in the US to Nigerian parents. Raised in Nigeria, he currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. He is the author of two books: a novella, Every Day Is for the Thief, and a novel, Open City, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award, the New York City Book Award for Fiction and the Rosenthal Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters; it was also shortlisted for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award and the New York Public Library Young Lions Award. He has been a contributor to The New York Times, Qarrtsiluni, Chimurenga, The New Yorker, Transition, Tin House, A Public Space, and other publications. He is currently at work on a book-length, non-fiction narrative of Lagos, and on a Twitter project called small fates.

Jon Cook is Professor of Literature at the University of East Anglia and Chair of the Arts Council in the East of England. 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 New Writing Worlds programme, and has hosted and chaired the Salon of international writers since its inception in 2005.

Andrew Cowan is Director of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. Before joining the faculty in 2004 he was twice a Royal Literary Fund writing fellow at UEA and a longstanding tutor for the Arvon Foundation. He is the author of five novels, published in twelve languages; they include Pig, which was long-listed for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for five other literary awards, and won a Betty Trask Award, the Authors’ Club First Novel Award, the Ruth Hadden Memorial Prize, a Scottish Arts Council Book Award and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award.

Common Ground and Crustaceans both received competitive 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 by Pearson Longman in 2011. His new novel, Worthless Men, will be published

by Sceptre in 2013.

Jill Dawson is the author of seven novels and the editor of six anthologies of poetry and short stories. She was twice nominated for the Orange Prize. Her novels include Fred & Edie, Wild Boy, Watch Me Disappear, The Great Lover, and Lucky Bunny, all published by Sceptre.

Lucky Bunny is currently being adapted for screen by the BBC. She holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Anglia Ruskin, Cambridge, has won awards for poetry, short stories and screenplays and held many fellowships, including the Creative Writing Fellowship at the University of East Anglia and the British Council Writing Fellowship at Amherst College, Massachusetts. She currently mentors new and emerging writers under a scheme she founded (see www.gold-dust.org.uk) and tutors creative writing for the UEA/Guardian master classes.

C J (‘Jonty’) Driver is a poet, novelist, and essayist. For many years a teacher – in Africa, Hong Kong and England – he is now a full-time writer living in East Sussex and travelling regularly to his country of birth, South Africa.

President of the National Union of South African Students in 1963 and 1964, he was held in solitary confinement by the South African police in 1964 and was later refused renewal of passport while a postgraduate student at Oxford; he remained a prohibited immigrant in South Africa until 1991. He has been an honorary senior lecturer in the School of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia since 2007, and was a judge of the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2007 and 2008. He was also a Research Fellow at the University of York in 1976, and more recently has held residencies at the Liguria Study Centre in Bogliasco; the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire; and the Hawthornden Writers’ Retreat. He has published five novels (the first four of which have recently been re-issued by Faber Finds), a biography, and six books of poetry – the most recent of which is So Far: Selected Poems 1964–2000.

His Rhymes for the Grandchildren: Moose, Mouse and Other Rhymes, was published by the Peridot Press in November 2011.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

14

15

Angus Muir

JON COOK

Ellen Elmendorp

TEJU COLE

Joe Dunthorne was born and raised in Swansea. His debut novel Submarine won the Curtis Brown Prize, was translated into twelve languages and adapted to film by Richard Ayoade, and his second novel, Wild Abandon (Hamish Hamilton), was published in 2011. He is a poet as well, with a pamphlet published by Faber and Faber. He co-organises a monthly night of literary miscellany, Homework, in East London, and is a striker for the England Writers’ Football Team.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

WORLDS 2012 PARTICIPANTS

ANNA FUNDER

KATE GRIFFIN

SAMANTHA HARVEY

ROBIN HEMLEY

VALERIE HENITIUK

Vesna Goldsworthy is an academic, broadcaster, and the author of several widely translated, prize-winning books. Her first, Inventing Ruritania: The Imperialism of the Imagination (Yale University Press, 1998), is an influential study of the Balkans in literature and film, and will be published in an updated paperback edition by Hurst in 2013. Her bestselling memoir, Chernobyl Strawberries (Atlantic, 2005), has had fourteen editions in German translation alone and was serialised in The Times. (She also read it herself for BBC Radio Four’s Book of the Week programme.)

Her Crashaw Prize-winning poetry collection, The Angel of Salonika, was one of The Times’ Best Poetry Books in 2011. A former BBC producer and journalist, she continues to script and produce programmes for a range of European broadcasters. Her TV feature, On Blood and Fiction, was part of an autumn book series on Sweden’s SVT in 2010. Her most recent fulllength English-language production, Finding a Voice in a Foreign Tongue, was broadcast by BBC Radio Four and by the BBC World Service.

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 Writers’ Centre Norwich and the London Review of Books. She has also worked for Arts Council England, the Arvon Foundation, and PEN International. From 2005–10 she was a judge for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. She spent most of the 1990s working overseas in Belgium and Russia.

Samantha Harvey is the author of The Wilderness (Jonathan Cape, 2009), which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and a Guardian First Book Award, long-listed for the Booker Prize, and won the Betty Trask Prize.

Her second novel, All Is Song, was published by Jonathan Cape in early 2012. In 2011 she was named one of the ‘twelve best new British novelists’

by BBC 2’s Culture Show. She teaches Creative Writing on the MA at Bath Spa University and has just completed a PhD in Creative Writing. She lives in Bath.

Robin Hemley is the author of ten books of nonfiction and fiction, and the winner of many awards including a 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship, the Nelson Algren Award for Fiction from The Chicago Tribune, Story Magazine’s Humor Prize, two Pushcart Prizes, and many others. His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have been published in several countries, and he frequently teaches creative writing workshops around the world. He has been widely anthologised, and has published his work in many of the finest literary magazines in the US. The BBC is currently developing a feature film based on his book Invented Eden, about a purported anthropological hoax in The Philippines. His third collection of short stories, Reply All, is forthcoming in 2012 from Indiana University Press (Break Away Books), and University of Georgia Press recently published his book A Field Guide for Immersion Writing: Memoir, Journalism, and Travel. He is a Senior Editor of The Iowa Review as well as the editor of a popular online journal, Defunct (defunctmag.com).

He currently directs the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa, and is the founder and organiser of NonfictioNow, a biennial conference that will convene in November 2012 in Melbourne, Australia.

Valerie Henitiuk is Senior Lecturer in Literature and Translation and Director of the British Centre for Literary Translation (BCLT) at the University of East Anglia. Before taking up the post at UEA, she obtained a PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Alberta in 2005 and went on to conduct research at Columbia University, supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada postdoctoral fellowship. Her research focuses primarily on Translation Studies, World Literature, Japanese Literature, and Women’s Writing.

Her work has been published in journals such as the Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, Comparative Literature Studies, META, TTR, and World Literature Today, and in collected volumes. Embodied Boundaries, her monograph on liminal metaphor in women’s writing in English, French and Japanese was published in 2007, and a co-edited collection of short stories by women from India’s Orissa province appeared in 2010. Another book, titled Worlding Sei Shônagon: The Pillow Book in Translation has just been published by University of Ottawa Press, and a co-edited volume of essays on the work of the author, teacher and founder of the BCLT, W G Sebald, is forthcoming. She is editor of the Routledge journal Translation Studies, and serves on the editorial board for In Other Words: The Journal for Literary Translators.

Karl Schwerdtfeger

VESNA GOLDSWORTHY

Anna Funder is the author of the internationally acclaimed, best-selling novel All That I Am, which was released in Australia in 2011 and is being published in sixteen countries.

Her previous book, Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall, was awarded the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2004 and has been published in twenty countries and fifteen languages.

She is a former Fellow of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Australia Council and the Rockefeller Foundation. In 2010 she held the New South Wales Writer’s Fellowship, and in 2011 she was appointed to the Australia Council for the Arts. Before turning to writing full-time, she practised as an international lawyer specialising in constitutional and human-rights law.

She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

16

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WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

WORLDS 2012 PARTICIPANTS

ANNA FUNDER

KATE GRIFFIN

SAMANTHA HARVEY

ROBIN HEMLEY

VALERIE HENITIUK

Vesna Goldsworthy is an academic, broadcaster, and the author of several widely translated, prize-winning books. Her first, Inventing Ruritania: The Imperialism of the Imagination (Yale University Press, 1998), is an influential study of the Balkans in literature and film, and will be published in an updated paperback edition by Hurst in 2013. Her bestselling memoir, Chernobyl Strawberries (Atlantic, 2005), has had fourteen editions in German translation alone and was serialised in The Times. (She also read it herself for BBC Radio Four’s Book of the Week programme.)

Her Crashaw Prize-winning poetry collection, The Angel of Salonika, was one of The Times’ Best Poetry Books in 2011. A former BBC producer and journalist, she continues to script and produce programmes for a range of European broadcasters. Her TV feature, On Blood and Fiction, was part of an autumn book series on Sweden’s SVT in 2010. Her most recent fulllength English-language production, Finding a Voice in a Foreign Tongue, was broadcast by BBC Radio Four and by the BBC World Service.

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 Writers’ Centre Norwich and the London Review of Books. She has also worked for Arts Council England, the Arvon Foundation, and PEN International. From 2005–10 she was a judge for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. She spent most of the 1990s working overseas in Belgium and Russia.

Samantha Harvey is the author of The Wilderness (Jonathan Cape, 2009), which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and a Guardian First Book Award, long-listed for the Booker Prize, and won the Betty Trask Prize.

Her second novel, All Is Song, was published by Jonathan Cape in early 2012. In 2011 she was named one of the ‘twelve best new British novelists’

by BBC 2’s Culture Show. She teaches Creative Writing on the MA at Bath Spa University and has just completed a PhD in Creative Writing. She lives in Bath.

Robin Hemley is the author of ten books of nonfiction and fiction, and the winner of many awards including a 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship, the Nelson Algren Award for Fiction from The Chicago Tribune, Story Magazine’s Humor Prize, two Pushcart Prizes, and many others. His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have been published in several countries, and he frequently teaches creative writing workshops around the world. He has been widely anthologised, and has published his work in many of the finest literary magazines in the US. The BBC is currently developing a feature film based on his book Invented Eden, about a purported anthropological hoax in The Philippines. His third collection of short stories, Reply All, is forthcoming in 2012 from Indiana University Press (Break Away Books), and University of Georgia Press recently published his book A Field Guide for Immersion Writing: Memoir, Journalism, and Travel. He is a Senior Editor of The Iowa Review as well as the editor of a popular online journal, Defunct (defunctmag.com).

He currently directs the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa, and is the founder and organiser of NonfictioNow, a biennial conference that will convene in November 2012 in Melbourne, Australia.

Valerie Henitiuk is Senior Lecturer in Literature and Translation and Director of the British Centre for Literary Translation (BCLT) at the University of East Anglia. Before taking up the post at UEA, she obtained a PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Alberta in 2005 and went on to conduct research at Columbia University, supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada postdoctoral fellowship. Her research focuses primarily on Translation Studies, World Literature, Japanese Literature, and Women’s Writing.

Her work has been published in journals such as the Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, Comparative Literature Studies, META, TTR, and World Literature Today, and in collected volumes. Embodied Boundaries, her monograph on liminal metaphor in women’s writing in English, French and Japanese was published in 2007, and a co-edited collection of short stories by women from India’s Orissa province appeared in 2010. Another book, titled Worlding Sei Shônagon: The Pillow Book in Translation has just been published by University of Ottawa Press, and a co-edited volume of essays on the work of the author, teacher and founder of the BCLT, W G Sebald, is forthcoming. She is editor of the Routledge journal Translation Studies, and serves on the editorial board for In Other Words: The Journal for Literary Translators.

Karl Schwerdtfeger

VESNA GOLDSWORTHY

Anna Funder is the author of the internationally acclaimed, best-selling novel All That I Am, which was released in Australia in 2011 and is being published in sixteen countries.

Her previous book, Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall, was awarded the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2004 and has been published in twenty countries and fifteen languages.

She is a former Fellow of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Australia Council and the Rockefeller Foundation. In 2010 she held the New South Wales Writer’s Fellowship, and in 2011 she was appointed to the Australia Council for the Arts. Before turning to writing full-time, she practised as an international lawyer specialising in constitutional and human-rights law.

She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

16

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WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

WORLDS 2012 PARTICIPANTS

ALEX MILLER

MICHAEL ONDAATJE

Gail Jones is an Australian academic and fiction writer who grew up in rural and remote areas of the country. Her fiction includes two books of short stories and five novels – Black Mirror, Sixty Lights, Dreams of Speaking, Sorry, and Five Bells (her most recent novel, begun at a writers’ residency in Shanghai in 2008). Her work has been widely translated, and awarded several literary prizes. She has also worked in India, Ireland, the US, and France, and lectures and speaks on literature across the globe. She is currently Professor of Writing at the Writing and Society Research Group of the University of Western Sydney, a group that seeks to link writing to other disciplines such as fine arts, cinema, history, and philosophy, and to enquire into the social dimensions of reading and writing.

Goretti Kyomuhendo grew up in Hoima, western Uganda. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa. Her second novel Secrets No More won the Uganda National Literary Award for Best Novel of the Year in 1999. She has also published a number of children’s books and short stories. She is a founding member of FEMRITE, the Uganda Women Writers’ Association and Publishing House, and worked as its first Programmes Coordinator from 1997–2007. In 2004, she was a tutor in the department of English at the University of Kwazulu-Natal. In 1997, she was the first Ugandan woman to receive an International Writing Program fellowship at the University of Iowa. She has since been invited to participate at various international readings, literary and academic conferences in France, Germany, The Netherlands, the UK, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Brazil, Malaysia, Thailand, the US and elsewhere.

In 2009, she founded and now directs the African Writers’ Trust, an organisation that brings together African writers living in both the Diaspora and on the continent, to promote skills sharing and learning.

She divides her time between London and Uganda.

Frances Leviston was born in Edinburgh and grew up in Sheffield.

She read English at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, and won an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors.

Her first collection, Public Dream, was published by Picador in 2007 and was shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and the Jerwood-Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. Her poems have appeared in the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, The Times, the Guardian and Edinburgh Review. She works as a freelance creative writing teacher for arts and educational organisations, including the Arvon Foundation, and reviews new poetry for the Guardian.

Alex Miller immigrated to Australia from the UK, alone, when he was sixteen. He has been hailed as the most deeply philosophical of contemporary Australian novelists and his work has long been celebrated in Australia. He won the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 1993 for The Ancestor Game, and again in 2003 for Journey to the Stone Country, regarded as one of the most insightful examinations of relations between Aboriginal and white Australians.

He achieved international recognition with his third novel, The Ancestor Game. His work continues to attract critical acclaim, with Landscape of Farewell (2007) receiving the 2008 Manning Clark House National Cultural Award and Lovesong (2009), the 2010 Age Book of the Year Award Fiction Prize, the Book of the Year Prize, the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction and the People’s Choice Award (at the 2011 New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards).

He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2011. Miller lives in the country with his wife Stephanie.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

18

Michael Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka in 1943. In the 1950s he moved to the UK and attended school in South London. In 1962 he immigrated to Canada, where he has lived ever since. His books include his memoir Running in the Family, numerous collections of poetry, and five novels – including The English Patient, which won the 1992 Booker Prize.

19

ALVIN PANG

Arc

FRANCES LEVISTON

Beowulf Sheehan

GORETTI KYOMUHENDO

Edwina Hollick

GAIL JONES

Alvin Pang is a poet, writer, editor, anthologist, and translator working primarily in English. His poetry has been translated into over fifteen languages, and he has appeared at major festivals and in anthologies worldwide. A Fellow of the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program (2002), his publications include Testing the Silence (1997), City of Rain (2003) and What Gives Us Our Names (2011). New volumes of his poems are forthcoming in 2012

by Arc Publications (UK) and Brutal (Croatia, in translation). He has edited the anthologies No Other City: The Ethos Anthology of Urban Poetry (2000); Over There: Poems from Singapore and Australia (co-edited with John Kinsella, 2008); and Tumasik: Contemporary Writing from Singapore (Autumn Hill [US], 2009), amongst others. He is a founding director of The Literary Centre, a Singaporean non-profit initiative promoting interdisciplinary capacity, multilingual communication, and positive social change. Amongst other public engagements, he is presently the managing editor of an internationally circulated public policy journal. He was named Young Artist of the Year for Literature in 2005 by Singapore’s National Arts Council, and was conferred the Singapore Youth Award (Arts and Culture) in 2007.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

WORLDS 2012 PARTICIPANTS

ALEX MILLER

MICHAEL ONDAATJE

Gail Jones is an Australian academic and fiction writer who grew up in rural and remote areas of the country. Her fiction includes two books of short stories and five novels – Black Mirror, Sixty Lights, Dreams of Speaking, Sorry, and Five Bells (her most recent novel, begun at a writers’ residency in Shanghai in 2008). Her work has been widely translated, and awarded several literary prizes. She has also worked in India, Ireland, the US, and France, and lectures and speaks on literature across the globe. She is currently Professor of Writing at the Writing and Society Research Group of the University of Western Sydney, a group that seeks to link writing to other disciplines such as fine arts, cinema, history, and philosophy, and to enquire into the social dimensions of reading and writing.

Goretti Kyomuhendo grew up in Hoima, western Uganda. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa. Her second novel Secrets No More won the Uganda National Literary Award for Best Novel of the Year in 1999. She has also published a number of children’s books and short stories. She is a founding member of FEMRITE, the Uganda Women Writers’ Association and Publishing House, and worked as its first Programmes Coordinator from 1997–2007. In 2004, she was a tutor in the department of English at the University of Kwazulu-Natal. In 1997, she was the first Ugandan woman to receive an International Writing Program fellowship at the University of Iowa. She has since been invited to participate at various international readings, literary and academic conferences in France, Germany, The Netherlands, the UK, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Brazil, Malaysia, Thailand, the US and elsewhere.

In 2009, she founded and now directs the African Writers’ Trust, an organisation that brings together African writers living in both the Diaspora and on the continent, to promote skills sharing and learning.

She divides her time between London and Uganda.

Frances Leviston was born in Edinburgh and grew up in Sheffield.

She read English at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, and won an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors.

Her first collection, Public Dream, was published by Picador in 2007 and was shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and the Jerwood-Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. Her poems have appeared in the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, The Times, the Guardian and Edinburgh Review. She works as a freelance creative writing teacher for arts and educational organisations, including the Arvon Foundation, and reviews new poetry for the Guardian.

Alex Miller immigrated to Australia from the UK, alone, when he was sixteen. He has been hailed as the most deeply philosophical of contemporary Australian novelists and his work has long been celebrated in Australia. He won the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 1993 for The Ancestor Game, and again in 2003 for Journey to the Stone Country, regarded as one of the most insightful examinations of relations between Aboriginal and white Australians.

He achieved international recognition with his third novel, The Ancestor Game. His work continues to attract critical acclaim, with Landscape of Farewell (2007) receiving the 2008 Manning Clark House National Cultural Award and Lovesong (2009), the 2010 Age Book of the Year Award Fiction Prize, the Book of the Year Prize, the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction and the People’s Choice Award (at the 2011 New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards).

He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2011. Miller lives in the country with his wife Stephanie.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

18

Michael Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka in 1943. In the 1950s he moved to the UK and attended school in South London. In 1962 he immigrated to Canada, where he has lived ever since. His books include his memoir Running in the Family, numerous collections of poetry, and five novels – including The English Patient, which won the 1992 Booker Prize.

19

ALVIN PANG

Arc

FRANCES LEVISTON

Beowulf Sheehan

GORETTI KYOMUHENDO

Edwina Hollick

GAIL JONES

Alvin Pang is a poet, writer, editor, anthologist, and translator working primarily in English. His poetry has been translated into over fifteen languages, and he has appeared at major festivals and in anthologies worldwide. A Fellow of the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program (2002), his publications include Testing the Silence (1997), City of Rain (2003) and What Gives Us Our Names (2011). New volumes of his poems are forthcoming in 2012

by Arc Publications (UK) and Brutal (Croatia, in translation). He has edited the anthologies No Other City: The Ethos Anthology of Urban Poetry (2000); Over There: Poems from Singapore and Australia (co-edited with John Kinsella, 2008); and Tumasik: Contemporary Writing from Singapore (Autumn Hill [US], 2009), amongst others. He is a founding director of The Literary Centre, a Singaporean non-profit initiative promoting interdisciplinary capacity, multilingual communication, and positive social change. Amongst other public engagements, he is presently the managing editor of an internationally circulated public policy journal. He was named Young Artist of the Year for Literature in 2005 by Singapore’s National Arts Council, and was conferred the Singapore Youth Award (Arts and Culture) in 2007.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

WORLDS 2012 PARTICIPANTS

TIM PARKS

RACHEL SEIFFERT

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.

Rachel Seiffert has published two novels, The Dark Room (2001) and Afterwards (2007) and an acclaimed collection of short stories, Field Study (2004). She has been nominated for the Booker and Orange Prizes, and was named amongst Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2003.

In 2011 she received the E M Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Two chapters from her new novel-in-progress are published in Granta’s current ‘Britain’ issue, under the working title Hands Across the Water. She lives in London with her family.

20

JO SHAPCOTT

Mark Pringle

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

Kerstin Ehmer

Tim Parks was born in Manchester, grew up in London and studied at Cambridge and Harvard. In 1981 he moved to Italy, where he has lived ever since. He is the author of novels, non-fiction and essays, including Europa, Cleaver, A Season with Verona, and Teach Us to Sit Still, his account of a sceptic’s journey into meditation and alternative health. He has won the Somerset Maugham and Betty Trask Awards as well as the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and been shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

He lectures on literary translation in Milan and writes for publications such as The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books. His many translations from the Italian include works by Moravia, Calvino, Calasso, Tabucchi and Machiavelli.

KAMILA SHAMSIE

Kamila Shamsie is the author of five novels: In the City by the Sea, Kartography (both shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize), Salt and Saffron, Broken Verses and Burnt Shadows, the last of which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and has been translated into more than twenty languages. She is a trustee of English PEN and Free Word, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She grew up in Karachi and now lives in London.

21

Derek Adams

JOHN PREBBLE

Basso Cannarsa

MARTIN PICK

Jo Shapcott was born in London.

Poems from her three award-winning collections – Electroplating the Baby (1988), Phrase Book (1992), and My Life Asleep (1998) – are gathered in a collection, Her Book (2000). She has won a number of literary prizes including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Collection, the Forward Prize for Best Collection, and the National Poetry Competition (twice). Tender Taxes, her versions of Rilke, was published in 2001, and Of Mutability in 2010.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

WORLDS 2012 PARTICIPANTS

TIM PARKS

RACHEL SEIFFERT

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.

Rachel Seiffert has published two novels, The Dark Room (2001) and Afterwards (2007) and an acclaimed collection of short stories, Field Study (2004). She has been nominated for the Booker and Orange Prizes, and was named amongst Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2003.

In 2011 she received the E M Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Two chapters from her new novel-in-progress are published in Granta’s current ‘Britain’ issue, under the working title Hands Across the Water. She lives in London with her family.

20

JO SHAPCOTT

Mark Pringle

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

Kerstin Ehmer

Tim Parks was born in Manchester, grew up in London and studied at Cambridge and Harvard. In 1981 he moved to Italy, where he has lived ever since. He is the author of novels, non-fiction and essays, including Europa, Cleaver, A Season with Verona, and Teach Us to Sit Still, his account of a sceptic’s journey into meditation and alternative health. He has won the Somerset Maugham and Betty Trask Awards as well as the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and been shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

He lectures on literary translation in Milan and writes for publications such as The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books. His many translations from the Italian include works by Moravia, Calvino, Calasso, Tabucchi and Machiavelli.

KAMILA SHAMSIE

Kamila Shamsie is the author of five novels: In the City by the Sea, Kartography (both shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize), Salt and Saffron, Broken Verses and Burnt Shadows, the last of which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and has been translated into more than twenty languages. She is a trustee of English PEN and Free Word, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She grew up in Karachi and now lives in London.

21

Derek Adams

JOHN PREBBLE

Basso Cannarsa

MARTIN PICK

Jo Shapcott was born in London.

Poems from her three award-winning collections – Electroplating the Baby (1988), Phrase Book (1992), and My Life Asleep (1998) – are gathered in a collection, Her Book (2000). She has won a number of literary prizes including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Collection, the Forward Prize for Best Collection, and the National Poetry Competition (twice). Tender Taxes, her versions of Rilke, was published in 2001, and Of Mutability in 2010.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

WORLDS 2012 PARTICIPANTS

SJÓN

Lucy Sheerman was born in Wales and grew up in West Yorkshire. She is currently a literature specialist at Arts Council England, working to support the development of writers and new writing. She set up a poetry series with Karlien van den Beukel, published by rem press, and ran a poetic practice seminar with Dell Olsen and Andrea Brady. She holds a PhD in Literature from the University of Cambridge; her thesis examined the relationship between language, writing and space.

Her own critical and creative writing, focusing on experimental poetic practice, has been featured in a variety of journals and online magazines. A pamphlet with Oystercatcher Press is forthcoming. She lives with her partner and four children in Cambridge.

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.

ANDREA STUART

HENRY SUTTON

REBECCA SWIFT

GEORGE SZIRTES

Andrea Stuart was born and raised in the Caribbean and the US. She studied English at the University of East Anglia and French at the Sorbonne. Her first book, Showgirls – a collective biography of showgirls from Colette, to Marlene Dietrich to Madonna – was adapted into a two-part documentary for the Discovery Channel in 1998, and has since inspired a theatrical show, a contemporary dance piece and a number of burlesque performances.

Her second book, The Rose of Martinique: A Biography of Napoleon's Josephine was translated into several languages and won the Enid McLeod Literary Prize in 2004. She is Writer-inResidence at Kingston University, and teaches at the Faber Academy.

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 will be 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.

Rebecca Swift is a writer, editor and co-founder and Director of The Literary Consultancy (TLC).

For seven years she worked at Virago Press, where she first conceived of the idea for TLC. Amongst her publications are 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). She has also had poetry published in Virago New Poets (1990), Vintage New Writing 6 (1995), Driftwood, US (2005), and Staple (2008). A libretto written by her was funded by Arts Council England, for Spirit Child, an opera composed

by Jenni Roditi and performed in London in 2001. She has also written and reviewed for The Independent on Sunday and the Guardian.

Her biography of Emily Dickinson, Dickinson: Poetic Lives, was published

by Hesperus in 2011.

George Szirtes was born in Budapest in 1948 and came to the UK as a refugee with his family following the Hungarian Uprising of 1956.

He trained in Fine Art. His first book, The Slant Door, was a joint winner of the Faber Prize in 1980. He has published several books since, which have garnered him the Cholmondeley Award and, most recently, the T S Eliot Prize for Reel (2004). New and Collected Poems was published in 2008 and named Book of the Year in The Independent on Sunday, and, in 2009, The Burning of the Books and Other Poems was shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize. He has also translated several books of prize-winning poetry and fiction from the Hungarian, and edited various anthologies.

His monograph on the artist Ana Maria Pacheco, Exercise of Power, was published by Lind Humphries in 2001. He has also written works for stage, worked with artists and composers, run a small press, and written for newspapers and radio.

A full list of his publications may be found under ‘Books’ on his website, www.georgeszirtes.co.uk, where he also keeps a regular blog (under ‘News’ – georgeszirtes.blogspot.com).

Thomas A

LUCY SHEERMAN

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

22

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WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

WORLDS 2012 PARTICIPANTS

SJÓN

Lucy Sheerman was born in Wales and grew up in West Yorkshire. She is currently a literature specialist at Arts Council England, working to support the development of writers and new writing. She set up a poetry series with Karlien van den Beukel, published by rem press, and ran a poetic practice seminar with Dell Olsen and Andrea Brady. She holds a PhD in Literature from the University of Cambridge; her thesis examined the relationship between language, writing and space.

Her own critical and creative writing, focusing on experimental poetic practice, has been featured in a variety of journals and online magazines. A pamphlet with Oystercatcher Press is forthcoming. She lives with her partner and four children in Cambridge.

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.

ANDREA STUART

HENRY SUTTON

REBECCA SWIFT

GEORGE SZIRTES

Andrea Stuart was born and raised in the Caribbean and the US. She studied English at the University of East Anglia and French at the Sorbonne. Her first book, Showgirls – a collective biography of showgirls from Colette, to Marlene Dietrich to Madonna – was adapted into a two-part documentary for the Discovery Channel in 1998, and has since inspired a theatrical show, a contemporary dance piece and a number of burlesque performances.

Her second book, The Rose of Martinique: A Biography of Napoleon's Josephine was translated into several languages and won the Enid McLeod Literary Prize in 2004. She is Writer-inResidence at Kingston University, and teaches at the Faber Academy.

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 will be 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.

Rebecca Swift is a writer, editor and co-founder and Director of The Literary Consultancy (TLC).

For seven years she worked at Virago Press, where she first conceived of the idea for TLC. Amongst her publications are 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). She has also had poetry published in Virago New Poets (1990), Vintage New Writing 6 (1995), Driftwood, US (2005), and Staple (2008). A libretto written by her was funded by Arts Council England, for Spirit Child, an opera composed

by Jenni Roditi and performed in London in 2001. She has also written and reviewed for The Independent on Sunday and the Guardian.

Her biography of Emily Dickinson, Dickinson: Poetic Lives, was published

by Hesperus in 2011.

George Szirtes was born in Budapest in 1948 and came to the UK as a refugee with his family following the Hungarian Uprising of 1956.

He trained in Fine Art. His first book, The Slant Door, was a joint winner of the Faber Prize in 1980. He has published several books since, which have garnered him the Cholmondeley Award and, most recently, the T S Eliot Prize for Reel (2004). New and Collected Poems was published in 2008 and named Book of the Year in The Independent on Sunday, and, in 2009, The Burning of the Books and Other Poems was shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize. He has also translated several books of prize-winning poetry and fiction from the Hungarian, and edited various anthologies.

His monograph on the artist Ana Maria Pacheco, Exercise of Power, was published by Lind Humphries in 2001. He has also written works for stage, worked with artists and composers, run a small press, and written for newspapers and radio.

A full list of his publications may be found under ‘Books’ on his website, www.georgeszirtes.co.uk, where he also keeps a regular blog (under ‘News’ – georgeszirtes.blogspot.com).

Thomas A

LUCY SHEERMAN

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

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WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

WORLDS 2012 PARTICIPANTS

YOKO TAWADA

MANON UPHOFF

TOMMY WIERINGA

Chika Unigwe was born and raised in Enugu, Nigeria. She earned a BA from the University of Nigeria, a postgraduate degree from the Katolike Universiteit Leuven in Belgium and a PhD from the University of Leiden in The Netherlands. In 2004 she was shortlisted for the Caine Prize.

Her other awards include a BBC Short Story Award, a Commonwealth Short Story Prize and Fellowships from UNESCO, the Rockefeller Foundation, Ledig House and HALD Denmark. She is published widely, and has contributed non-fiction essays to the Guardian and The New York Times.

Her 2009 novel On Black Sisters Street was very well-received, and was republished in paperback in 2011

by Jonathan Cape, which will also release her next novel, Night Dancer, in June 2012.

Manon Uphoff made her literary debut in 1995 with Begeerte (Desire), an acclaimed collection of short stories that was nominated for several Dutch literary prizes. Her novel Gemis (Amiss) followed in 1997 and was nominated for the Libris Literature Prize and the Betje Wolff Award.

In 1998 she published a collection of short stories, De fluwelen machine (The Velvet Machine); in 2000, an essay collection, Hij zegt dat ik niet dansen kan (He Says I Can’t Dance); and in 2002 a short novel, De vanger (The Catcher), which received excellent reviews, was adapted to film, and aired on Dutch television and at the Dutch Film Festival in 2003. In 2004 she published another short novel, De bastaard (The Bastard). That year Dutch critics placed her among the top five most talented writers of the late 1990s. She lives in The Netherlands and spends time in Croatia. She is Vice President of Dutch PEN.

Tommy Wieringa was born in 1967 and grew up partly in The Netherlands, partly in the tropics. He began his career writing travel stories and journalism, and is the author of three novels, including Joe Speedboat (Portobello, 2009), which won the Ferdinand Bordewijk Prize – awarded for the best Dutch prose book – in 2006.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

24

Peter Peitsch

Yoko Tawada was born in Tokyo and educated at Waseda University.

She has lived in Germany since 1982, where she received her PhD in German Literature. In 1993 she received the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for her collection of three fantasy narratives, The Bridegroom Was a Dog. She writes in both German and Japanese, and in 1996, she won the Adalbert-von-Chamisso Prize, a German award recognising foreign writers for contributions to German culture. In 2005 she received the Goethe-Medal, an official decoration of the Federal Republic of Germany.

JEANETTE WINTERSON

Viviane Sassen

Yves Noir www.yves-noir.de

CHIKA UNIGWE

Jeanette Winterson is the author of ten novels, including Oranges Are not the Only Fruit (which has sold over 1 million copies), The Passion, Sexing the Cherry, and Written on the Body; a book of short stories, The World and Other Places; a collection of essays, Art Objects; and many other works, including children’s books, screenplays and journalism. Her writing has won the Whitbread Award for Best First Novel, the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize, the E M Forster Award and the Prix d’argent at the Cannes Film Festival. She was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2006, ‘for services to literature’.

25

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

WORLDS 2012 PARTICIPANTS

YOKO TAWADA

MANON UPHOFF

TOMMY WIERINGA

Chika Unigwe was born and raised in Enugu, Nigeria. She earned a BA from the University of Nigeria, a postgraduate degree from the Katolike Universiteit Leuven in Belgium and a PhD from the University of Leiden in The Netherlands. In 2004 she was shortlisted for the Caine Prize.

Her other awards include a BBC Short Story Award, a Commonwealth Short Story Prize and Fellowships from UNESCO, the Rockefeller Foundation, Ledig House and HALD Denmark. She is published widely, and has contributed non-fiction essays to the Guardian and The New York Times.

Her 2009 novel On Black Sisters Street was very well-received, and was republished in paperback in 2011

by Jonathan Cape, which will also release her next novel, Night Dancer, in June 2012.

Manon Uphoff made her literary debut in 1995 with Begeerte (Desire), an acclaimed collection of short stories that was nominated for several Dutch literary prizes. Her novel Gemis (Amiss) followed in 1997 and was nominated for the Libris Literature Prize and the Betje Wolff Award.

In 1998 she published a collection of short stories, De fluwelen machine (The Velvet Machine); in 2000, an essay collection, Hij zegt dat ik niet dansen kan (He Says I Can’t Dance); and in 2002 a short novel, De vanger (The Catcher), which received excellent reviews, was adapted to film, and aired on Dutch television and at the Dutch Film Festival in 2003. In 2004 she published another short novel, De bastaard (The Bastard). That year Dutch critics placed her among the top five most talented writers of the late 1990s. She lives in The Netherlands and spends time in Croatia. She is Vice President of Dutch PEN.

Tommy Wieringa was born in 1967 and grew up partly in The Netherlands, partly in the tropics. He began his career writing travel stories and journalism, and is the author of three novels, including Joe Speedboat (Portobello, 2009), which won the Ferdinand Bordewijk Prize – awarded for the best Dutch prose book – in 2006.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

24

Peter Peitsch

Yoko Tawada was born in Tokyo and educated at Waseda University.

She has lived in Germany since 1982, where she received her PhD in German Literature. In 1993 she received the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for her collection of three fantasy narratives, The Bridegroom Was a Dog. She writes in both German and Japanese, and in 1996, she won the Adalbert-von-Chamisso Prize, a German award recognising foreign writers for contributions to German culture. In 2005 she received the Goethe-Medal, an official decoration of the Federal Republic of Germany.

JEANETTE WINTERSON

Viviane Sassen

Yves Noir www.yves-noir.de

CHIKA UNIGWE

Jeanette Winterson is the author of ten novels, including Oranges Are not the Only Fruit (which has sold over 1 million copies), The Passion, Sexing the Cherry, and Written on the Body; a book of short stories, The World and Other Places; a collection of essays, Art Objects; and many other works, including children’s books, screenplays and journalism. Her writing has won the Whitbread Award for Best First Novel, the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize, the E M Forster Award and the Prix d’argent at the Cannes Film Festival. She was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2006, ‘for services to literature’.

25

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

MEET WRITERS’ CENTRE NORWICH MITCHELL ALBERT

KATY CARR

MARTIN FIGURA

CHRIS GRIBBLE

SHENAZ KEDAR

LARA NARKIEWICZ

Mitchell Albert is Programme Director of Writers’ Centre Norwich. From 2007–11 he edited the literary magazine of PEN International, the worldwide writers’ association.

He later also helped coordinate the organisation’s communications and literary events departments. As a former commissioning editor and subsequently as a freelance editor, he has developed and edited a wide range of non-fiction books for publishing houses in the UK and US, plus novels, short story and poetry collections, magazines and journals.

He continues to consult on book projects and writes poetry and long emails from Norwich, the sixth major world metropolis he has called home after Montreal, Tokyo, New York, Toronto and London.

Katy Carr is Writers’ Centre Norwich’s Marketing Manager. She manages media, PR, website, data, print, social media and all communications work for the organisation. She has long been passionate about creative writing, and her work has always revolved around communication and writing including: managing and communicating on behalf of a heritage project, producing community theatre, running a creative writing programme and teaching in Italy. She has studied literature and creative writing at University of East Anglia and writes part-time. Her past projects include a collaborative Arts Council-funded play and a radio drama for the BBC. She is currently working on a novel.

Martin Figura is Finance Manager for Writers’ Centre Norwich and is a photographer and poet. He is an associate artist with Apples & Snakes and is touring a spoken-word version of his collection Whistle (Arrowhead, 2010), which will include a performance at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. He won the Poetry Society’s Hamish Canham Prize and was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in 2010. 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 runs Café Writers, a monthly live literature event in Norwich.

Chris Gribble is the Chief Executive of Writers’ Centre Norwich. After completing a PhD in German Poetry and Philosophy at the University of Manchester, he worked in publishing for Carcanet Press and PN Review, then spent several years working in cultural policy and was the Director of Manchester Poetry Festival and then Manchester Literature Festival.

He sits on the advisory group for Manchester University’s Centre for New Writing, and is on the Board of Directors of the International Cities of Refuge Network, Co-Chair of the National Association for Literature Development and a Board Member of Writers’ Centre Norwich. He is also an Artistic Assessor for Arts Council England.

Shenaz Kedar is a Programme Manager for Writers’ Centre Norwich.

She has over twelve years of experience working on project development in collaboration with international partners in a variety of contexts. Having worked and lived in Portugal, Japan, Greece, Israel and the UK, she joined Writers’ Centre Norwich in June 2006 to launch and manage the Norwich City of Refuge programme. As Programme Manager she also oversees the organisation’s involvement in the implementation of the Shahrazad – Stories for Life project in the UK. This wide ranging cross art form community arts and education programme was launched in 2007. Shahrazad is a European Union Culture co-operation project between Norwich, Barcelona, Brussels, Frankfurt, Stavanger and Stockholm, which runs over five years. Shahrazad events and activities have been delivered in collaboration with a range of partners, including festivals, museums, libraries and schools. Shenaz also works with organisations specialising in different art forms across the arts sector such as music, dance and theatre, thereby enjoying full immersion in the arts world in her role as regional coordinator of both Refugee Week and Platforma for the East of England.

Lara Narkiewicz is the Programme Assistant for Writers’ Centre Norwich, primarily providing administrative support to the programmes staff.

She completed a BA in French and Hispanic Studies at the University of Sheffield, developing an avid interest in Latin American and post-colonial French-language literature. Lara returned to Norfolk, the county in which she grew up, to study for an MA in International Relations and Development Studies at the University of East Anglia. Alongside her work at Writers’ Centre Norwich, she works for a local charity. In her spare time she volunteers regularly for several local and international organisations, and has experience in teaching English to nonnative English speakers. Her passion for language and literature continues to grow through her second-hand bookshop visits and her faded but faithful library card.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

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WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

MEET WRITERS’ CENTRE NORWICH MITCHELL ALBERT

KATY CARR

MARTIN FIGURA

CHRIS GRIBBLE

SHENAZ KEDAR

LARA NARKIEWICZ

Mitchell Albert is Programme Director of Writers’ Centre Norwich. From 2007–11 he edited the literary magazine of PEN International, the worldwide writers’ association.

He later also helped coordinate the organisation’s communications and literary events departments. As a former commissioning editor and subsequently as a freelance editor, he has developed and edited a wide range of non-fiction books for publishing houses in the UK and US, plus novels, short story and poetry collections, magazines and journals.

He continues to consult on book projects and writes poetry and long emails from Norwich, the sixth major world metropolis he has called home after Montreal, Tokyo, New York, Toronto and London.

Katy Carr is Writers’ Centre Norwich’s Marketing Manager. She manages media, PR, website, data, print, social media and all communications work for the organisation. She has long been passionate about creative writing, and her work has always revolved around communication and writing including: managing and communicating on behalf of a heritage project, producing community theatre, running a creative writing programme and teaching in Italy. She has studied literature and creative writing at University of East Anglia and writes part-time. Her past projects include a collaborative Arts Council-funded play and a radio drama for the BBC. She is currently working on a novel.

Martin Figura is Finance Manager for Writers’ Centre Norwich and is a photographer and poet. He is an associate artist with Apples & Snakes and is touring a spoken-word version of his collection Whistle (Arrowhead, 2010), which will include a performance at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. He won the Poetry Society’s Hamish Canham Prize and was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in 2010. 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 runs Café Writers, a monthly live literature event in Norwich.

Chris Gribble is the Chief Executive of Writers’ Centre Norwich. After completing a PhD in German Poetry and Philosophy at the University of Manchester, he worked in publishing for Carcanet Press and PN Review, then spent several years working in cultural policy and was the Director of Manchester Poetry Festival and then Manchester Literature Festival.

He sits on the advisory group for Manchester University’s Centre for New Writing, and is on the Board of Directors of the International Cities of Refuge Network, Co-Chair of the National Association for Literature Development and a Board Member of Writers’ Centre Norwich. He is also an Artistic Assessor for Arts Council England.

Shenaz Kedar is a Programme Manager for Writers’ Centre Norwich.

She has over twelve years of experience working on project development in collaboration with international partners in a variety of contexts. Having worked and lived in Portugal, Japan, Greece, Israel and the UK, she joined Writers’ Centre Norwich in June 2006 to launch and manage the Norwich City of Refuge programme. As Programme Manager she also oversees the organisation’s involvement in the implementation of the Shahrazad – Stories for Life project in the UK. This wide ranging cross art form community arts and education programme was launched in 2007. Shahrazad is a European Union Culture co-operation project between Norwich, Barcelona, Brussels, Frankfurt, Stavanger and Stockholm, which runs over five years. Shahrazad events and activities have been delivered in collaboration with a range of partners, including festivals, museums, libraries and schools. Shenaz also works with organisations specialising in different art forms across the arts sector such as music, dance and theatre, thereby enjoying full immersion in the arts world in her role as regional coordinator of both Refugee Week and Platforma for the East of England.

Lara Narkiewicz is the Programme Assistant for Writers’ Centre Norwich, primarily providing administrative support to the programmes staff.

She completed a BA in French and Hispanic Studies at the University of Sheffield, developing an avid interest in Latin American and post-colonial French-language literature. Lara returned to Norfolk, the county in which she grew up, to study for an MA in International Relations and Development Studies at the University of East Anglia. Alongside her work at Writers’ Centre Norwich, she works for a local charity. In her spare time she volunteers regularly for several local and international organisations, and has experience in teaching English to nonnative English speakers. Her passion for language and literature continues to grow through her second-hand bookshop visits and her faded but faithful library card.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

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WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

MEET WRITERS’ CENTRE NORWICH SAM RUDDOCK

LAURA STIMSON

LEILA TELFORD

RICHARD WHITE

ROWAN WHITESIDE

Sam Ruddock is a Programme Manager for Writers’ Centre Norwich.

He joined Writers’ Centre Norwich in February 2009, having previously been a Senior Bookseller with Waterstone’s.

As a Programme Manager, amongst other things, Sam looks after the Norwich Showcase, Summer Reads and the monthly Salon programmes.

His big love is fiction. He believes passionately in the power of stories to transform our understanding of the world. Outside work he tries valiantly to maintain a book-review blog, Books, Time, and Silence, and contributes regularly to others, including the popular book collective Vulpes Libris.

He also hosts a popular book quiz at the Norwich Millennium Library. He lives in Norwich with his wife and two cats, and spends too much time sat on his couch watching sport.

Laura Stimson is a Programme Manager for Writers’ Centre Norwich.

She joined the organisation in 2007 as a co-manager for their regional Live Literature programme. She has supervised the management of Worlds since 2009 and her role at WCN also focuses on artist development.

Outside of Writers’ Centre Norwich she produces music and literature events and is the singer for loungecore band The Ferries. She studied creative writing at Norwich School of Art and Design (now Norwich University College of the Arts) and University of East Anglia and has had work published with Unthank Books, Nasty Little Press and Ink, Sweat and Tears. She has lived in the Fine City of Norwich for the last eleven years and counts herself as a proud Norwichian.

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

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. Rest assured, the commute allows plenty of time for reading.

Rowan Whiteside graduated with a degree in English and American Literature from University of East Anglia in 2011. After graduating, she managed the fiction department at Waterstone’s. She reads voraciously and finds it impossible to leave the house without at least one book. In her spare time she writes fiction and, to her delight, recently won a short story competition.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

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WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

MEET WRITERS’ CENTRE NORWICH SAM RUDDOCK

LAURA STIMSON

LEILA TELFORD

RICHARD WHITE

ROWAN WHITESIDE

Sam Ruddock is a Programme Manager for Writers’ Centre Norwich.

He joined Writers’ Centre Norwich in February 2009, having previously been a Senior Bookseller with Waterstone’s.

As a Programme Manager, amongst other things, Sam looks after the Norwich Showcase, Summer Reads and the monthly Salon programmes.

His big love is fiction. He believes passionately in the power of stories to transform our understanding of the world. Outside work he tries valiantly to maintain a book-review blog, Books, Time, and Silence, and contributes regularly to others, including the popular book collective Vulpes Libris.

He also hosts a popular book quiz at the Norwich Millennium Library. He lives in Norwich with his wife and two cats, and spends too much time sat on his couch watching sport.

Laura Stimson is a Programme Manager for Writers’ Centre Norwich.

She joined the organisation in 2007 as a co-manager for their regional Live Literature programme. She has supervised the management of Worlds since 2009 and her role at WCN also focuses on artist development.

Outside of Writers’ Centre Norwich she produces music and literature events and is the singer for loungecore band The Ferries. She studied creative writing at Norwich School of Art and Design (now Norwich University College of the Arts) and University of East Anglia and has had work published with Unthank Books, Nasty Little Press and Ink, Sweat and Tears. She has lived in the Fine City of Norwich for the last eleven years and counts herself as a proud Norwichian.

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

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. Rest assured, the commute allows plenty of time for reading.

Rowan Whiteside graduated with a degree in English and American Literature from University of East Anglia in 2011. After graduating, she managed the fiction department at Waterstone’s. She reads voraciously and finds it impossible to leave the house without at least one book. In her spare time she writes fiction and, to her delight, recently won a short story competition.

WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL

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WORLDS LITERATURE FESTIVAL