Opening Night - Free the Word!

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On the Opening Night of the Winternachten festival 2018 the focus was on freedom of speech.

Pauline Krikke, Mayor of The Hague, opened the festival followed by a word of welcome by Ton van de Langkruis, Director of Winternachten festival. Jennifer Clement, writer and President of PEN International introduced Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid. His novel Exit West was nominated for the Man Booker Prize 2017. On the occasion of the Opening Night, Hamid delivers the Free the Word! speech.

The prestigious Oxfam Novib PEN Awards, presented to the winners by Oxfam Novib director Farah Karimi, honour writers who currently risk their freedom and even their lives to seek out and publish the truth.

The winners of the Oxfam Novib PEN Awards 2018 are journalist and writer Milagros Socorro from Venezuela and journalist Eskinder Nega from Ethiopia. Nega is imprisoned in his homeland and is therefore not attending to receive his Award.

The award ceremony was followed by an introduction of the award winners during the PEN Conversation by journalist and Nieuwsuur-anchor Eelco Bosch van Rosenthal.

The Opening Night programme further included performances by Boi Akih (world jazz) and Joost Baars (poetry). The programme was hosted by Margot Dijkgraaf, literary critic who regularly publishes in Dutch national newspaper NRC, and Chair of the Board of the Writers Unlimited organisation.

The Opening Night is organized in collaboration with Oxfam Novib, PEN International and PEN Nederland.

Information

Date and time Thursday 18 January 2018 from 20:00 to 22:00 hrs
Location Theater aan het Spui - Zaal 1

Line-up

Mohsin Hamid

(Lahore, 1971) grew up in the US and Pakistan. He started writing his debut Moth Smoke (2000) during his studies at Harvard. This innovatively written novel, in which an ex-banker becomes addicted to heroin, became a cult hit in India and Pakistan. The international bestseller The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007), about a Pakistani who gives up his top job in the US due to his disappointment with the West, was turned into a film. After his third novel, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (2013), he wrote Discomfort and Civilization (2014), an autobiographical acount about politics, culture and religion, and Exit West (2017), a novel focused on a refugee couple in love. He also writes essays and opinion pieces in publications such as The Guardian, The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune.
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Margot Dijkgraaf

(The Netherlands, 1960) is a literary critic, writer, curator, interviewer, debate leader and "ambassador between France and the Netherlands in the field of literature", as a French ambassador once said. She has been writing about literature for some 30 years, mainly for the NRC daily. She published books on French and European literature, on Hella S. Haasse and Cees Nooteboom. Her In de voetsporen van mijn grootvader (2021) is an autobiographical search for her literary genes. Before that, she published Met Parijse pen. Literaire omzwervingen (in collaboration with photographer Bart Koetsier, 2020), which takes readers to Paris for walks in the footsteps of famous Dutch and French writers. She was joint artistic curator of the Netherlands' Guest of Honour role at the 2024 Leipzig Book Fair with German journalist Bettina Baltschev.

Go to the website of Margot Dijkgraaf
Instagram: @margotdijkgraaf
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Joost Baars

(Leidschendam, NL, 1975) is a poet, essayist and bookseller. His very well received debut poetry collection Binnenplaats (Inner Space) was nominated for the 2017 C. Buddingh Prize and awarded the 2018 VSB Poetry Prize. According to the jury of the C. Buddingh Prize: "How must one love in the shadow of insecurity? Joost Baars gropes in the dark and find poems there that reveal unmistakable mastery and dizzying depth". Baars' poems are mystical but not religious. They attest to an enormous erudition and are simultaneously worldly, funny and romantic. The collection consists of four parts and includes translated sonnets of the English Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889). Baars was a programmer with the Perdu Foundation and organizer of the poetry Festival Dichtersmarathon (Poets' Marathon), and is the publisher of Halverwege Chapbooks and the spiritual father of VersSpreken, a podcast about poetry.
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Jennifer Clement

(USA, 1960) is President of PEN International. She has authored five novels, including Prayers for the Stolen. It was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice and appeared internationally on many book-of-the-year lists. In 2018, Gun Love was published, a topical novel about homelessness, the America love for weapons and the despair of people living on the edge of society. She has published various volumes of poetry, including The Next Stranger. Clement also wrote cult classic Widow Basquiat about painter and street artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and life in New York City in the early '80s. She is a member of the prestigious Mexican 'Sistema Nacional de Creadores' and received an NEA Fellowship, an award of the American National Endowment for the Arts.
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Boi Akih

The band Boi Akih represents a musical movement in which diverse styles from such places as India, Africa, Europe and the Moluccan Islands blend with jazz. Singer Monica Akihari and composer guitarist Niels Brouwer characterise the essence of Boi Akih with an ensemble of song and composition. In search of their musical boundaries, they challenge and at the same time complement one another. Akihari sings not only in English but also in her native language: the language of the Moluccan island Haruku. On their latest CD Yalelol, the group uses a duet-form, and in addition to jazz, their are also Indonesian, Indian, European, West African and Arab influences. On the third album Uwa i (2004), Boi Akih was inspried by music from Bangalore, India. The first self-titled CD of Boi Akih appeared in 1997 and the second one, Above the Clouds, Among the Roots, in 2000. De Volkskrant wrote: "Boi Akih is a world-class band. Daring, adventurous and lyrical are the keywords."
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Farah Karimi

(Iran, 1960) is a member of the Senate of the Dutch Parliament (Eerste Kamer) since June 2019 for GroenLinks. From 2008 to 2018 she chaired the Executive Board of Oxfam Novib. Karimi is highly experienced in the field of international cooperation and human rights, and she is a strategic delevopment coach for leadership and organisational change. She came to Europe as a political refugee in 1983. She studied in the Netherlands and was a member of the Dutch House of Representatives for GroenLinks (Green Left) from 1998 till 2006. In 2007 she helped to establish the Afghan parliament as a consultant with the UN branch UNDP. As an administrator, she was involved with the advisory board of the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World, among other projects. She chairs the Board of Stichting Writers Unlimited since 2018. Karimi has written thee books: Slagveld Afghanistan (Battlefield Afghanistan, 2006), with co-author Chris Keulemans Het geheim van het vuur (The Secret of Fire, 2007) and In naam van de vrijheid: hoe de wereld na 9/11 steeds onvrijer is geworden (In the name of freedom: how our world has become increasingly unfree after 9/11, 2021).
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Milagros Socorro

(Venezuela, 1960), winner of the Oxfam Novib PEN Award 2018, is a journalist, writer and university professor holding degrees in Social Communication and Latin American literature. As a journalist, Socorro worked for national and regional media outlets, including the Venezuelan newspaper El Universal, Colombian magazine Revista Gato Pardo, Claro! Magazine, El Nacional, Climax magazine, and has served as the general editor of Código Venezuela a news portal. Over the course of her career, she has received a number of awards including the Miguel Otero prize for Best Journalist for the daily El Nacional in 2004. She has been described as ‘a guide to her readers in matters of defence of democracy, freedom of expression and information, fight against corruption and authoritarianism.’ Additionally, Socorro has written a variety of novels, short stories and testimonials, among them, El Abrazo de tamarindo (fiction, 2008); Vacas en las Nubes (youth literature, 2008) and Actos de Salvajismo (short stories, 1999).
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Eelco Bosch van Rosenthal

(Bunschoten, NL, 1976) studied literature and American Studies in Groningen and was US correspondent for NOS (Dutch national public television) from 2007 through the presidential election of 2012. Since the summer of 2016 he has been the anchor of the national television news magazine Nieuwsuur. In the fall of 2016, his documentary travel series Droomland Amerika (Dreamland America) was broadcast on national public television. Besides his work with NOS, he writes for various media about the United States.
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Pauline Krikke

(Sneek, 1961) became the mayor of The Hague on 17 March 2017. Representing the Dutch political party VVD, she became a member of the municipal council in Amsterdam in 1994. In 1996 she became deputy mayor for Economic Affairs, Airport and Seaport. After the municipal council elections of 1998, she was re-elected as deputy mayor and changed her portfolios to Economic Affairs and Employment, Construction, Housing and the Economy. In September 2001 Pauline Krikke became mayor of Arnhem. After 2 full six-year terms, she decided not to continue as mayor for a third term. In July 2013 she resigned her post in Arnhem. In addition to her role as mayor, she was also a member of the board of the international Red Cross /Red Crescent Movement from 2005 to 2013. From October 2014 she was general director of the National Maritime Museum in Amsterdam. Nevertheless, her main love remained public service. In 2015 she therefore became a member of the Senate. She resigned that membership when she was inaugurated as mayor of The Hague.
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Ton van de Langkruis

(Netherlands, 1957) was, for 25 years, director and programmer of Writers Unlimited which he founded in 1995. After studying English Language at Leiden University and Theatre Sciences at Utrecht University, he worked in theatres as a dramaturge, director, critic and tour organiser. In 1992 he organised the Samuel Beckett Festival in The Hague, a collaboration of the city's arts organizations. In 1995 he organised the Indië/Indonesië Festival (Dutch East Indies/Indonesia Festival), which brought together the arts of Indonesia and the Netherlands to celebrate the Republic of Indonesia's 50th anniversary. This event, ending with the Indische Winternacht (East-Indies Winternight), was the start of the Winternachten international literary festival The Hague. Under his guidance, Writers Unlimited and Winternachten festival grew out to become a both nationally and internationally reputed platform where writers, poets, scientists and journalists from all over the world met their audiences for conversations, recitations and performances about culturally diverse, social, literary, scientific and other topical themes.
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