Opening Night - Free the Word!

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Opening NIght of the Winternachten festival is dedicated to freedom of expression, featuring poetry, music, the Free the Word! speech, and the Oxfam Novib PEN Awards ceremony.

Robert van Asten, The Hague Elderman for Mobility, Culture and Strategy opened the festival. Radna Fabias, winner of the 2018 C. Buddingh Prize for best Dutch-language poetry debut, started the night off with a reading from her collection Habitus. Then the Mexican-American writer Jennifer Clement, chair of PEN International, delivered a statement about freedom of expression. After that, Canadian writer Madeleine Thien delivered the Free the Word! speech.

Nicaraguan writer and poet Gioconda Belli and Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour who currently risk their freedom and lives to seek out and publish the truth were honoured during the prestigious Oxfam Novib PEN Awards ceremony. Oxfam Novib director Michiel Servaes handed out the prizes. Also Italian writer Roberto Saviano received an Oxfam Novib PEN Award. Since the publication of his book Gomorrah (2006), he lives under police protection and could not attend. Afterwards, the other two winners discussed their work and experiences with writer and journalist Hassnae Bouazza and Dutch national news presenter Eelco Bosch van Rosenthal. They read from their own poetry. English spoken.

The Opening Night programme was framed with musical performances by singer-songwriter Raj Mohan and hosted by Hassnae Bouazza. The evening is a collaboration between Oxfam Novib, PEN International and PEN Nederland.

Information

Date and time Thursday 17 January 2019 from 20:00 to 22:00 hrs
Location Theater aan het Spui - Zaal 1

Line-up

Radna Fabias

(Curaçao, 1983) won all major poetry awards in The Netherlands and Belgium for her 2018 poetry debut Habitus. This startling, existentialist collection deals with Curaçao, feeling at home, and her role as a (black) woman, immigrant and outsider. She studied Writing for Performance at the Utrecht School of the Arts. Fabias' work is characterized by variety, both in terms of content and style. De Groene Amsterdammer magazine commented in 2018: "Fabias dares to utilize every nook and cranny of poetry as an art form; some poems are short and lyrical, others narrative and long, sometimes they are clear and accessible and then hermetic and experimental." Habitus has been published in France, Italy, Germany, Argentina and the USA. Fabias also translated poetry collections by British poet Warsan Shire and Nobel Prize winner Louise Glück into Dutch.
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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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Hassnae Bouazza

(Morocco, 1973) is a journalist, columnist, translator, researcher and producer. She publishes in various media (including Dutch national daily newspaper NRC and women's magazine Linda); runs her own online magazine for culture lovers, Aicha Qandisha. She compiled a story collection about Arab women, Achter de sluier (Behind the Veil, 1999); 2013 saw the publication of her book Arabieren kijken (Looking at Arabs), about "ordinary" people in the Arab world. She made TV programs for various broadcasters, including the documentary series Seks en de Zonde (Sex and Sin). Together with Michelin-starred chef Soenil Bahadoer, she wrote the culinary books Spicy Chef (2020) and Streetfood (2022). She published two further books in 2022: Een koffer vol citroenen (A Suitcase Full of Lemons), a requiem for and portrait of her mother, and Arbeidsmigranten in Nederland (Migrant Labourers in the Netherlands).
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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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Gioconda Belli

(Managua, 1948) is a Nicaraguan poet, writer and political activist. She was involved in the Nicaraguan Revolution from a very young age and occupied important positions in the Sandinista Party and in the revolutionary government. She left the Sandinista Party in 1993. She debuted in 1970 with publications in magazines, wrote politically and erotically oriented poems and received her first literary award in 1972 with many prizes to follow. Her debut novel La Mujer Habitada (The Inhabited Woman), published in 1988, was her international breakthrough. Belli now is a bestselling author whose works have been translated in twenty languages. She now is an influential critic of the government of her former fellow party member Ortega.
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Dareen Tatour

(Israel, 1982) is a poet from Palestinian origine who in 2015 was put under house arrest that would last three years for posting a video on Facebook and YouTube of herself reading a poem titled Resist my people, resist them as the soundtrack to images of Palestinians in violent confrontations with Israeli troops. During her house arrest she was barred from publishing her poetry and from accessing the internet. In 2018 Tatour was sentenced to five months of prison for 'online incitement of terrorism' by the Nazareth district court. She was released from prison in October 2018.
Her first poetry collection, The last invasion, was published in 2010. A second poetry collection and a novel are ready but are on a laptop confiscated by Israeli authorities, says webmagazine Brooklyn Rail (March 2018).
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Raj Mohan

(Suriname, 1962) published his first volume of poetry, Bapauti/Erfenis (Bapauti/Heritage) in 2008, an elaboration of the songs on his album Kantráki/Contract Labourer. The collection Tihá/Troost (Tihá/Comfort) followed in 2011 with lyrics from his pop album Daayra. The singer, poet and composer -- with parental roots in India, born in Suriname, and living in The Netherlands -- deals with societal themes and with subjects that are taboo within Hindustani and Indian circles. Mohan writes in Sarnámi, the mother tongue of the Hindustani in Suriname and the Netherlands. He is founder and artistic director of musical groups like the Raj Mohan Ensemble, Vistar and Shai'rana, with which he tours at home and abroad. He plays and sings compositions based on his own lyrics and on poems by contemporary Urdu poets in the (lightly) classical tradition of Northern India.
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Michiel Servaes

has been general director of Oxfam Novib since 2018. In this position and as chairman of the board, he is wholly responsible for the organization's policies. The management team also includes the director of operations, Pauline Mulder, and Ton Meijers, who is responsible for programs and campaigns. Servaes earned a Master in political science and international relations at the University of Leiden. He has extensive diplomatic experience, represented the Labour Party in Parliament for almost five years, and has worked in various policy positions at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His most recent position was deputy director of the social development department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
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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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Madeleine Thien

(Canada, 1974) has written books including the 2001 short-story collection Simple Recipes and the 2006 novel Certainty. Her most recent novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing (2016), won various international prizes and was on the Man Booker Prize shortlist. It focuses on Li-Ling who, as a result of the suicide of her father, an emigrant who grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution, comes into possession of the mysterious Book of Records. Alice Munro said the following: "Thien's prose astonishes the reader with its clarity, the apparent ease with which it is written, and its emotional purity." The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature refers to Thien's work as a reflection of transcultural Canadian literature, which investigates art and politics in the Asian diaspora.
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Robert van Asten

(Voorburg, 1978) is Alderman for Mobility, Culture and Strategy of the City of The Hague since June 2018. Libraries, monuments and cultural heritage are also part of his policy areas. Furthermore he is Alderman of Segbroek, one of the eight The Hague districts. Before taking office as Alderman, Van Asten was a member of The Hague's City Council for D66 since 2014. He studied tax law at Leiden University and worked for, among others, Deloitte and Vistra.
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