Neske Beks
(Belgium, 1972) is a writer, transdisciplinary artist and a film and theatre maker. She debuted with De Kleenex Kronieken (The Kleenex Chronicles, 2014), a family and village chronicle featuring Priscilla, the daughter of a Flemish father and a Senegalese mother. She published the children's book Sala & Monk in 2020. In Echo - essays, speeches en brieven (Echo - essays, speeches and letters, 2021), named after the poem Echoes by Audre Lorde, she places her finger on a sore spot. Not only is the white gaze still dominant in our society, Black women are doubly disadvantaged: they aren't white and they aren't men. Beks shows how systematic is not to be seen or heard. Her essay De kleine Morrison: een wegwijzer in het lezen van haar werk vanuit Zwart perspectief (The Little Morrison: A Signpost to Reading Her Work from a Black Perspective, 2023) offers readers of Toni Morrison, the most famous female black writer and Nobel Prize for Literature winner who died in 2019, insight into her life and work. Beks shows that in everything she does, Morrison invites self-critical reflection on language, structure, power, gender, race, law and injustice, blackness, the white gaze and the meaning of oral and written narratives.
Past events
Whose House is This?
A literary relay with readings on the festival theme 'Whose House is This?'. The festival authors are blowing a strong wind through the homes of the family, society and literature!
Neverending Stories
Book talk show by ROSE Stories: in conversation about Neske Beks' essay collection 'Echo'.
Wintercafé 3 Tip Marugg
A ‘pre-read’ at Winternachten round writer Tip Marugg (1923-2006). With Aart Broek, Petra Possel and Carel de Haseth. In Dutch.
Wintercafé 1: Arthur Japin
A brand new story by born storyteller Arthur Japin, on dream and reality. In cooperation with DeBuren from Brussels. The Wintercafé is hosted on Saturday night by Neske Beks and Wim Brands. In Dutch.
Wintercafé 4 The folds of language
Selim Temo (Kurdish), Kamran Nazirli (Azerbaijani) and Gündüz Vassaf (Turkey) read and talk about their daily struggle not to have their language kidnapped by politics or taboo. Turkish/Dutch/English.
Wintercafé 2: Pupils & Hélène Gelèns on revelations
Hélène Gelèns and pupils of local secondary schools read their own work on ‘revelations’. In Dutch.
