The Flame of Freedom - Opening Writers Unlimited Festival 2025

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The 30th edition of the Writers Unlimited International Literature Festival The Hague had the theme On Fire. Fire symbolises destructive forces such as war and global warming on the one hand, but also love and freedom on the other. Jan van Zanen, mayor of The Hague, officially opened the festival.

The opening night was dedicated to free speech, with a keynote speech by Ukraine's most important writer Andrei Kurkov,who in 2024 published two new books in Dutch translation: the gripping war diary Our Daily War and the Kyiv-based historical thriller The Silver Bone.

Other speakers were author Nelleke Noordervliet, who read a column and British author and stand-up comedian Viv Groskop who represented PEN International, the writers' organisation dedicated to freedom of expression.

This programme was also a preview and kick-off of the 30th edition of the festival, with readings, music and talks. Dutch national broadcaster NPO Radio 1-programme Kunststof presenter Andrew Makkinga interviewed writers who will also perform elsewhere in the festival:

South African author Rešoketšwe Manenzhe wrote Scatterlings, her first novel about a young family broken up by the law that criminalised interracial relationships. The New York Times wrote: "a novel that is at once exquisitely intimate and globally ambitious." Rešoketšwe also performed at both grand festival evening programmes Friday and Saturday Night Unlimited.

Famous British author, stand-up comedian, podcast creator, TV and radio presenter Viv Groskop has written seven books and creates the podcast How to Own the Room, listened to millions of times, on topics including self-confidence, public speaking and dealing with stressful situations.

Onjuli Datta and her wife Mikaella Clements, who work and live in Berlin, co-authored the novels The View was Exhausting and Feast While You Can. They read a fragment of their own work in the form of a dialogue.

Mamar, a formation of young musicians from Syria, Turkey, the US, Italy and the Netherlands provided musical contributions. The band members are Barış Ofluoğlu (double bass), Sebastiaan West (piano), Rita Brancato (drums), Talaf Fayad (ud) and Leah Uijterlinde (clarinet, vocals).

The programme included the screening of the short film Monument for murdered writers and journalists 2024, a project by Theatre of Wrong Decisions, Committee To Protect Journalists (CPJ) and PEN International.

The Flame of Freedom - Opening Writers Unlimited Festival 2025 was curated by Ilonka Reintjens.


Festival tip 1: after the opening night programme, many joined us to spoken word event Mensen Zeggen Dingen x Writers Unlimited Festival, at Paard (starts 21:30 hours): the literary afterparty with poetry, poetry slam, prose and punchlines by Palestinian-American poet George Abraham, Aruban spoken word artist and poet Rosabelle Illes and, from The Netherlands, Sabina Lukovic, Duimalot and Damaris. Host was Dean Bowen.

Festival tip 2: Rešoketšwe Manenzhe, Viv Groskop, Onjuli Datta and Andrei Kurkov also performed during the grand festival nights Friday and Saturday Night Unlimited: experience the full festival experience here and choose your own route along performances, readings, talks, music and films with many authors and artists from home and abroad on five stages of Theater aan het Spui and the adjacent Filmhuis Den Haag.

Information

Date and time Thursday 23 January 2025 from 19:30 to 21:00 hrs
Location Theater aan het Spui - Zaal 1
Price 10,- (up to 30 years)
7,50 (Ooievaarspas)| 12,50 (DenHaagPas)
15,- (regular).

Line-up

Judith Uijterlinde

(The Netherlands, 1962) is a writer, literary journalist, publisher and, since 2023, director of Writers Unlimited. Her autobiographical debut The Baby Void – My Quest for Motherhood (2001) was an international success and has been published in more than 20 countries. De vrouw die zegt dat ze mijn moeder is (The Woman Who Claims She's My Mother, 2010) recounts adoption in a family history set against the backdrop of World War II. Uyterlinde worked as editor and publisher for several literary publishers, including De Bezige Bij and J.M. Meulenhoff. Between 2007 and 2015, she was also associated with Writers Unlimited, first as a producer and later as the festival's event coordinator. Since 2017 she has been publisher/director at World Editions, specializing in English-language translated literature from around the world. For the Amsterdam Public Library, she runs the Literary Salon, and for Women Inc., the literature series Read My Lips. She coordinated the literary part of the Guest of Honour program presenting Dutch and Flemish literature at the 2016 Frankfurt Book Fair.
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Jan van Zanen

(1961) is Mayor of The Hague since 1 July 2020. He spent his youth in Edam-Volendam in the Netherlands and completed his Law studies at the Free University of Amsterdam and Cornell Law School in Ithaca, New York, USA. He then went to work as board and executive secretary for a national business association, among other positions, until 1998. Van Zanen started as a city counciler in Utrecht in 1990, then became alderman for finance, economic affairs, public space and monuments in 1998. From 2003 to 2008, he served as national chairman of the VVD Dutch political party. From July 2005 to December 2013, Van Zanen was Mayor of Amstelveen and as of January 1, 2014, Mayor of Utrecht. From June 2015 to June 2023, he was chairman of the Association of Dutch Municipalities (VNG).
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Andrej Koerkov

(Russia, 1961) is a Ukrainian writer world famous for the mix of harsh realism and absurdist humour in his novels and non fiction books. He is a respected commentator on the situation in his country. In The President's Last Love, Kurkov employs humour and cynicism to describe how a boy manages to work his way up to become the most powerful man in the country. Ukraine Diaries: Dispatches from Kiev, his eyewitness account of political unrest in the Ukraine, was published in 2014. Dairy of an Invasion (2022) and Our daily war (2024) are collections of Kurkov's writings and broadcasts. In 2024, he published The Silver Bone, the first part of The Kyiv Mysteries, his series of crime novels in historical settings. The second part The Stolen Heart will be published in 2025; the third part The Public Sauna Case is in development.
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Mikaella Clements

is an Australian writer currently based in Berlin. With her wife Onjuli Datta, she co-wrote Feast While You Can (2024), an 'exciting new hybrid horror-romance' about queer love in a small town that serves as an unsettling reminder that the horrors of modern life is a monster ready to possess us all' (New York Times Book Review), as well as The View Was Exhausting, which was a Goop book club pick and named one of the best books of the summer by Vogue. Mikaella's short stories have been anthologised in Black Inc.’s Best Summer Stories (2018) and Kill Your Darlings’ New Australian Fiction (2019). Her non-fiction has been published in the New York Times, Guardian, Washington Post, TLS, and many others. She has a Masters in English Studies from the Freie Universität Berlin.
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Mamar

is a formation of young musicians from Syria, Turkey, US, Italy and the Netherlands brought together and led by Leah Uijterlinde during her studies on Clarinet in the Turkish department of Codarts (Rotterdam). The original compositions of the band come from the different band members, sharing a love and admiration for modality and intonation as represented in Turkish and Arabic music. All musicians have a background in jazz and modal music, and bring these worlds together in the compositions of Mamar. The band members are Bariş Ofluoğlu (double bass), Sebastiaan West (piano), Rita Brancato (drums), Talaf Fayad (ud) and Leah Uijterlinde (clarinet, vocals).
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Rešoketšwe Manenzhe

(South Africa) is a poet, short story writer and novelist. Her short stories and poems have appeared in the Kalahari Review, Fireside Fiction, Praxis Magazine, Lolwe, FIYAH, and the 2017 Sol Plaatjie European Union Anthology, among others. She holds a master’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Cape Town (UCT). Her debut. the historical novel Scatterlings (2020) is set in 1927, when South Africa passes the Immorality Act, prohibiting sexual intercourse between “Europeans” (white people) and “natives” (Black people). Those who break the draconian new law face imprisonment. Abram and his wife Alisa have their share of marital problems, but they also have a comfortable life in South Africa with their two young girls. But then the Act is passed. Alisa is black, and their two children are now evidence of their involvement in a union that has been criminalized by the state.
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Viv Groskop

(United Kingdom) is an award-winning writer, comedian, broadcaster and performance coach. She is the author of the best-selling How to Own the Room: Women and the Art of Brilliant Speaking (2018), Lift As You Climb: Women and the Art of Ambition (2020) and Happy High Status: How to Be Effortlessly Confident (2023). Her podcast How to Own the Room is the biggest public speaking podcast in the world and features interviews with Hillary Clinton, Margaret Atwood, Professor Mary Beard and Julie Andrews. Her other books include The Anna Karenina Fix: Life Lessons from Russian Literature and Au Revoir, Tristesse: Lessons in Happiness from French Literature. She appears regularly on BBC TV and radio and for six years she did a run of sold-out one-woman comedy shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. As a columnist she writes regularly for the Guardian and the Financial Times.
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Onjuli Datta

(UK) is the co-author of Feast While You Can, a queer horror-romance which the New York Times described as 'adventurous, exciting, fantastical and erotic.' She is also co-author of The View Was Exhausting, a Goop and Good Housekeeping book club pick named 'a perfect summer read' by Vogue. Her writing has been featured in Salon, Reactor Magazine, Lithub, Autostraddle, Vulture and more. She lives in Berlin with her wife and co-author Mikaella Clements.
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Andrew Makkinga

(Uganda, 1982) is since 2024 one of the three resident hosts of Kunststof, Dutch national public network NTR's culture and media programme, which is broadcast Monday to Thursday between 7 and 8 pm on NPO Radio 1. Andrew is no stranger to the Dutch media landscape: at 17, he was discovered as a talented debater in national Dutch debating competition Op weg naar het Lagerhuis (On the way to the Congress). After that, he soon ended up in radio. His interests and network extend from hip-hop, jazz and reggae to various types of classical music, literature, politics, theatre and visual arts. For years, he has been a regular at North Sea Jazz and many other (music) festivals; for his NPO Soul & Jazz-podcast series Makkinga Moves, he conducted countless interviews with artists.
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Nelleke Noordervliet

(Netherlands, 1945) writes novels, stories, essays, lectures and columns with a strong historical bent. She debuted with 1987's Tine of de dalen waar het leven woont (Tine, or the Valleys Where Life Lives), a fictitious biography of 19th-century Dutch writer Multatuli's first wife. Her book De naam van de vader (The Name of the Father) won the 1994 Multatuli Prize. In 2002 she wrote Pelican Bay, about slavery in the Caribbean and the Netherlands. Her essay collection Schatplicht (Tribute) appeared in 2013, and her 2016 novel Aan het eind van de dag (At the End of the Day) is simultaneously a portrait of a career woman and a snapshot of the second half of the 20th century. De val van Thomas G. (The fall of Thomas G.) tells about the publisher of a controversial book. Noordervliet's body of work was awarded the 2018 Constantijn Huygens Prize.
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