Trailer Slow Winternachten Festival 2021

Watch - free and on demand so whenever you want - on the Writers Unlimited website all the programmes, poems, short stories, interviews, spoken word and music performances of the online Winternachten international literature festival The Hague 2021!

Go to the programme overview here.

An addition to the #SoulCare-theme is an interview by Gerlinda Heywegen with writer Eva Meijer about depression, based on her book De grenzen van mijn taal (The limits of my language). The interview is Dutch spoken.

Recommended also: eight video poems made by Spot on Young Poets participants. Their personal images, poems and wishes portray a young generation that is struggling during the corona pandemic.

The five Winternachten festival programmes - live streamed from 13 - 17 January 2021 - are available for free viewing as well. Authors from home and abroad approach the festival theme It's Up to Us with creative energy. Additionally, find also the short, previously filmed, commissioned stories, essays and poems.

Watch, listen and read how our authors deploy literary power and activism for new angles on women's rights, climate injustice, self-care as protest and a planet in which non-human creatures and objects also have a voice.

Welcome to the Slow Winternachten festival 2021!

Information

Date and time Saturday 20 March 2021 from 19:40 to 10:57 hrs
Location Online

Line-up

Simon(e) van Saarloos

is a writer, artistic collaborator and curator. They are the author of Against Ageism. A Queer Manifesto (2023); Take ‘Em Down. Scattered Monuments and Queer Forgetting (2021) and Playing Monogamy (2019) as well as several books in Dutch: Herdenken herdacht (2019); Enz. Het Wildersproces (2018); the novel De vrouw die (2016); the collection of columns Ik deug / deug niet ( 2015) and Het monogame drama (2015). . Van Saarloos works as an independent curator of public programming and artistic collaborations. A current PhD candidate in Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley, they are interested in Black feminist engagements with quantum physics and focused on the rhetorical (im)possibility of existence without defense. Van Saarloos is currently writing a new book for AK Press, titled Trans Despair: Staying Unrelated and Insecure.

Go the website of Simon(e) van Saarloos
Instagram: @svansaarloos
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Chihiro Geuzebroek

(1983) is a filmmaker and climate-justice activist. She focused on Film Studies at the University of Amsterdam and worked on projects for the NPO public broadcaster, the Animal Party, and ARTIS. After filming at the 2009 Copenhagen UN Climate Summit, she travelled to Bolivia to shoot her climate-justice documentary Radical Friends. In 2016 she started to film activist performances for Fossil Free Culture; she also took part three times in annual protests against the coal industry in Germany. She participates in Code Red and Fossil Free Culture (film work), has been a coordinator with Greenpeace (2019), a campaign leader in the Amsterdam municipal elections (2018), and a co-founder of the Climate Liberation Bloc (2017) and the decolonization foundation Aralez (2020).
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Amahl Raphael Khouri

(Jordan) is a queer transgender playwright and theatre artist living and working in Berlin and Egypt. He has written plays including No Matter Where I Go (2014), a performance about the experiences of queer women in Lebanon, Ich brauche meine Ruhe (I Need some Peace and Quiet, 2018), and She He Me (2019), the first Arabic trans script. His work has been selected for various theatre initiatives and readings in the USA and Great Britain.
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Munganyende Hélène Christelle

(Rwanda, 1993) is a writer, societal critic and co-host of the podcast Fufu & Dadels. The program discusses critical life questions about issues such as feminism and gender roles, intercultural sisterhood and fuckboys, and traditions and sexuality. She grew up in Kigali and Eindhoven and studied political science in Brussels. She writes about feminism and the political emancipation of migrant millennials in publications such as Vogue, Vileine and OneWorld. Together with other women of colour, Christelle founded IamSHERO. This foundation aims to show young Dutch women that everyone has opportunities. She wrote the following about her debut novel Vreemd fruit (Strange Fruit), published in 2021: "I strive to give a voice to young women growing up with the same complex migration history as mine. Young people who must learn to move between displacement and homecoming."
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Kaouthar Darmoni

(Tunisia, 1968) followed Gender Studies at the Sorbonne in Paris and obtained her PhD in that field from the Lumières University Lyon II. She has lived and worked in the Netherlands for many years. She has various (academic) publications to her name, almost twenty years of experience in gender and media studies, and is also an experienced entrepreneur, a speaker about women's leadership, and a media personality. She is active in various international women's movements. Her online course, The Divine9 Dance Therapy, inspired by traditional Arabian dance, helps women find their feminine power.
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Koleka Putuma

(South Africa, 1993) is a poet, performer and theatre artist. She stormed onto the South African literary scene with her debut collection Collective Amnesia (2017), which became an immediate bestseller. Putuma is seen as an important young voice in South African poetry. She belongs to a generation without memories of apartheid, but which still deals with its consequences and repercussions on a daily basis. As a result, her work probes themes such as race, homophobia, womxnhood, and the workings of power structures in relationships, religion and politics. Her poetry is daring and inventive, not only in structure and language but also in form - sometimes it consists of only one line. She is the founder and director of Manyano Media, an organization that produces and promotes the work and stories of queer black artists and queer life.
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Dilâra Gürcü

(Turkey, 1986) completed her high-school education at Izmir American Collegiate Institute, which included an exchange year in Rochester, New York. After completing a BA in psychology at Yeditepe University in Istanbul, she worked as a psychologist for five years. From 2013 to 2014 she wrote for the Turkish newspaper Radikal on topics such as feminism, social movements and minority rights. In 2015, she founded Turkey’s first internet platform to combat sexism, erktolia. She left the organization in 2017. In the meantime, she  has been involved with various activist projects in Turkey and France and has organized crowdfunding campaigns. Since 2014, Gürcü has written about feminism for Turkey’s first independent online magazine, T24. Her first nonfiction book, It’s No Longer Between Us (2019) emphasizes that for women, the personal must become political. She has lived in Paris since 2013, where she works in the internet technologies industry.
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Sanam Sheriff

(India, 1995) is a poet and artist from Bangalore. In 2018 she graduated from Bryn Mawr College in Philadelphia, USA, with a BA in Creative Writing. She was a 2018-2019 Thomas J. Watson Fellow, a 2018 Pushcart Prize nominee, and the winner of the 2018 Button Poetry Video Contest. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Virginia Quarterly Review, The Offing, Vinyl Poetry & Prose, The Academy of American Poets, The Shade Journal, DW B, and elsewhere. She is currently an MFA candidate in Poetry at Washington University in St. Louis, where she is poetry editor of The Spectacle Magazine. Sheriff was a guest of the 2018 Winternachten International Literature Festival The Hague.
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Nicole le Fever

(Netherlands, 1965) started her career in youth journalism and became the Middle East correspondent for Dutch NOS News from 2006 to 2011, reporting on 22 countries from her base in Amman, Jordan. Through her work she developed great admiration for the people in the areas she covered, above all praising their helpfulness and hospitality. “When you ask for directions, whole groups walk along with you, and people are truly relieved when you reach your destination.” Since her return to the Netherlands, Le Fever has worked for the NOS newsdesk.
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Sulaiman Addonia

(Eritrea, 1975) is an Eritrean-Ethiopian-British novelist. His first novel, The Consequences of Love (2008), shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and translated into more than 20 languages, is a love story set in Jeddah. Silence is My Mother Tongue (2018) was longlisted for the 2019 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. This second novel is about Saba, a girl in an East African refugee camp. Devoid of school and books, she struggles to give meaning to her own existence and to protect her brother. Both resist the roles imposed by their gender and environment. Addonia currently lives in Brussels, where he established the Asmara-Addis Literary Festival (in Exile), a creative-writing academy for refugees and asylum seekers. Together with Specimen Press, he co-founded a new literary competition and prize for hybrid and collective writing: To Speak Europe in Different Languages.
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Fiep van Bodegom

(India, 1984) is a writer, critic and translator. She is editor of Extra Extra Magazine and teaches in the Creative Writing department at Artez University of the Arts. She writes regularly on literature (including for De Groene Amsterdammer, NRC and De Nederlandse Boekengids) and has published translations, essays and fiction.
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Alexis Wright

(Australia, 1950), is an activist and author of the internationally successful, award-winning novels Plains of Promise (1997), Carpentaria (2006) and The Swan Book (2013). She also published three works of non-fiction: Grog War (1997), a study of how the Aboriginal community self-organizes against alcohol abuse; Take Power Like This Old Man Here (1998), an oral history of the Aboriginal land-rights battle; and Tracker (2017), a collective storytelling tribute to Tracker Tilmouth, advocate and activist for the legal and economic advancement of Aboriginal people. Wright is a member of the Waanyi Nation in the highlands of the North Australian Gulf of Carpentaria, which declared independence in 2020.
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Bahghi

is a vocalist and singer of soul, jazz and pop songs. Together with bassist Vincent Arp, she released her 2019 debut EP Sunshine's Got the Blues, featuring songs about "letting go of what you think you need to be and trusting that everything will be fine if you stay connected to the core of life: love".
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Leena Norms

(UK, 1990) is a literary video essayist, poet and critic. She became well-known with her popular Just Kiss My Frog YouTube channel (almost 7 million views since 2007), which features book discussions, top-ten lists, poetry readings and personal vlogs. In 2019 she published Doom Rolled in Glitter, a collection of twenty poems about the highs and lows in the life of a twentysomething: friendships, identity crises, facing climate change, first love. Norms studied English Literature at Aberystwyth University in Wales.

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Benjamin Fro

(Netherlands, 1994; given name Adam Bais) is a music and word artist with more than 400K streams on Spotify, who once described himself as a philosophical rapper who creates hip hop music. But he's so much more than that. His first solo album, Praten Over Leven (Talking About Life, 2017), is full of hip hop grooves, nods to fellow rappers and, above all, a strong mix of musical genres. His second album, Behave (2018), criticizes the Dutch "just be normal" mentality via soulful beats. Fro's 2019 EP In the City, about identity, gentrification, love and spirituality in a world where money and status are paramount, did well, followed in 2020 by the EP I Love Them.


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Annemarie Estor

(1973) is a poet, essyaist and illustrator of her literary works. She twice won the Herman de Coninck Prize: for her debut poetry collection Vuurdoorn me (Firethorn Me) in 2011 and for De oksels van de bok (The Buck's Armpits) in 2013. In 2015 she published Dit is geen theater meer (This Goes Beyond Theatre). Characteristic of her poetry is an erotic or more generally sensual and sensory approach. Her collection Niemandslandnacht (No-Man's-Land Night) is a "crime poem" about a divided city where little is what it seems. It's a world of extremes - exotic but often terribly recognizable. It was awarded the 2018 Jan Campert Prize. In 2020 she published the poetry collection De bruidsvlucht (The Bride Flight) and the long poem Een nieuwe biotoop (A New Biotope) in Zwemlessen voor later (Swimming Lessons for Later), a collection of climate poems featuring 160 Dutch and Flemish poets.
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Meltem Halaceli

is a writer, feminist and programmer with a special interest in the Middle-East. Halaceli works as project manager for inclusivity at the University of Amsterdam and as a programmer for the Winternachten International Literature Festival The Hague. Her debut De vergeten geschiedenis van mijn grootvader Sulayman Hadj Ali (The Forgotten History of My Grandfather Sulayman Hadj Ali, 2015) deals with the discovery of her grandfather's memoirs. The book tells about her search for his life story, which ended in the First World War period, when he was a conscripted soldier - an era with direct influence on the present. Her poem Moederhuis (Motherhouse) won the El Hizjra Literature Prize. Halaceli has worked as a researcher and interpreter for various prominent programs of the Dutch national broadcaster VPRO. She is working on her second book.
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Gerlinda Heywegen

(1968) is a programmer, writer, organizer, lecturer and podcaster, mainly on the subject of film and often in combination with literature. Koning Film is the collective of speakers on film that she established. Heywegen's books include The Other Director, about directors of photography; she collaborated with Frans Westra on Passie voor Cinema (Passion for Cinema), which highlights four decades of film screenings in the Netherlands; and she edited and wrote for the film magazine Skrien. Currently, she writes regularly for the websites of the Netherlands Society of Cinematographers and literary magazine Elders.
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Mithu Sanyal

(Germany, 1971) is a cultural scientist, journalist and author who writes about sex, gender, post-colonialism, power and racism. Her dissertation on the cultural history of female genitalia was published as Vulva. Die Enthüllung des unsichtbaren Geschlechts (Vulva: A Revelation of the Invisible Sex, 2009), a pioneering work. Since 1996 Sanyal has written features and radio plays for the German broadcaster WDR, and publishes essays and articles in publications such as The Guardian and various German magazines. Her study Vergewaltigung. Aspekte eines Verbrechens (2016; English translation Rape. From Lucretia to #MeToo, 2019) shows that beliefs about rape have a long and remarkably consistent history. In her debut novel Identitti (2021), Sanyal addresses identity politics in a story that involves a student and her Postcolonial Studies teacher, who is not the person of color she pretends to be.
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Samanta Schweblin

(Argentina, 1978) has, since 2002, published an internationally acclaimed oeuvre of three collections of short stories, a novel and a novella. Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages. She lives in Berlin. Her debut novel, Distancia de rescate (Fever Dream, 2014), is a compelling dialogue between two mothers, set against a threatening background of environmental problems. In the novel Kentukis (Little Eyes), cute little animal robots have become a fad, offering comfort, friendship or cuddliness. But the cameras in their eyes record everything and are controlled via the Internet by an unknown force. Schweblin hits a sensitive nerve in an era of Internet giants and social media that know everything about us.
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Ilonka Reintjens

is a producer and project coordinator for literary events. Before this, she worked as publisher and editor at various publishing houses. She currently is business and artistic leader of the literary festival Meet Me at the Lighthouse on the Dutch island Schiermonnikoog, and for Writers Unlimited as a program coordinator and curator for the Writers Unlimited international literary festival The Hague and the monthly Writers Series.
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Arnon Grunberg

(Netherlands, 1971) is one of the most successful Dutch writers, both at home and abroad. The prolific novelist, columnist, essayist, poet and scriptwriter lives and works mainly in New York. His fiction tackles themes such as religion, parenthood, love and relationships. His essays, columns, debates and performances seek out the polemics on topical issues. His debut novel and international breakthrough, Blauwe maandagen (Blue Mondays, 1994), was followed by award-winning and internationally successful novels such as Phantom Pain (2000), The Asylum Seeker (2003), Tirza (2006), Onze oom (Our Uncle, 2007), Huid en haar (Tooth and Nail, 2010), Moedervlekken (Birthmarks, 2016) and Bezette gebieden (Occupied Territories, 2020). Between 2000 and 2008 he also published novels and essays under the pseudonym Marek van der Jagt. The prize jury called the author "a writer unequalled in ambition, productivity and intellectual power".
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Salena Godden

is an icon of the British spoken-word scene, a beloved English poet and performer, a social and political activist, and a radio producer. In the early nineties she began publishing CDs and DVDs of her poetry readings and live performances; she continuously expands this series, such as with 2020's The Lockdown E.P. Her poems, essays and short stories have been included in dozens of anthologies. Since 2011 she has published the poetry collections Under the Pier and Fishing In The Aftermath - Poems 1994-2014, and the youth memoir Springfield Road. Pessimism is for Lightweights - 13 pieces of courage and resistance (2018) was inspired by protests and demonstrations about issues such as women's rights, justice, sexism, racism, immigration and identity. Her debut novel Mrs Death Misses Death was published in January 2021.
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Jens Meijen

(Belgium, 1996) completed a Master's degree in Western Literature, Literary Sciences and European Studies at the Catholic University Leuven. He is a journalist, critic and columnist for Flemish publications, the editor of Greenpeace Belgium, and an editor with the literary magazine dw b (Dietsche Warande & Belfort). He was also the (first) Young Flemish Poet Laureate. His poems have appeared in De Revisor, deFusie, Hard//hoofd and Deus ex Machina. Xenomorf (2019), his debut collection, passionately opposes the demise of Earth through pollution, increased production and maximum profits with a great deal of linguistic pleasure; it was awareded the C. Buddingh Poetry Prize. His debut novel De lichtjaren (The Light Years) was published in 2021.
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Jaap Tielbeke

(1989) has been a member of the editorial staff of the Dutch weekly De Groene Amsterdammer since 2015. His book Een beter milieu begint niet bij jezelf (A Better Environment Doesn't Start with You, 2020) argues that an emphasis on "green" consumer behaviour leaves out the big issues and the real culprits. While we busily try to reduce our ecological footprint, the fossil industry happily continues to pump up oil. While we are made to feel shame for flying, governments continue to subsidize air traffic. Instead of blaming one another, we should hold the real culprits accountable. In short, combating the climate crisis requires political action. Tielbeke studied International Relations and Philosophy at Dutch and Belgian universities. For De Groene he primarily writes about climate change, social movements and democratic renewal.
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Eva Meijer

(Netherlands, 1980) is a visual artist, philosopher, writer and singer-songwriter. After publishing short stories and poetry in Dutch literary magazines, her debut novel Het schuwste dier (The Shiest Animal), about coping with a sudden death, appeared in 2011. In Dagpauwoog (Day Peacock Eye, 2013), the protagonist lands in a grey area between idealism and terror due to a love of animals. Het vogelhuis (The Birdhouse, 2016) portrays the profound passion for birds of the British Gwendolen Howard. De soldaat was een dolfijn (The Soldier was a Dolphin), an essay about political animals, came out in 2017. In 2018, Meijer was awarded the Halewijn Prize for her oeuvre. After a philosophical treatise on depression, De grenzen van mijn taal (The Limits of my Language), the novel Voorwaarts (Onward), and the academic study When Animals Speak: Towards an Interspecies Democracy (all 2019), she published the 2020 novel De nieuwe rivier (The New River), a magical-realist murder mystery.
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Nisrine Mbarki

(The Netherlands, 1977) is a writer, poet, columnist and literary translator. She writes short stories, theatre scripts and poetry, and translates poetry from Arabic into Dutch. Her poems and columns regularly appear in Dutch literary magazines. She has appeared at festivals such as Poetry International, Globale in Bremen, Writers Unlimited, Read My World, the Felix Poetry Festival in Antwerp, and the Nacht van de Poëzie (Night of Poetry). She is co-founder and artistic director of the theatre company Landgenoten, for which she wrote Club Paradis (2016), which was staged in the Netherlands and Germany. Her debut poetry collection oeverloos (Endless) was published in 2022.
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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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Raoul de Jong

(Rotterdam, 1984) writes novels, literary nonfiction and essays in a.o. news media Vrij Nederland, Het Parool and NRC Handelsblad. For his novel Stinknegers (2006), in which the main character travels solo through West Africa, he received the Dick Scherpenzeel Prize. He also published, among others, Het leven is verschrikkulluk (2005), It's Amaaazing (2006), Miracoloso (2008), De grootsheid van het al (2013) and Dagboek van een puber (2018). In Jaguarman; Mijn vader, zijn vader en andere Surinaamse helden (2020). a mix of fiction, nonfiction and travelogue, he speaks to archaeologists, dance teachers and winti priests in Suriname, and gets to know Surinamese writers, thinkers and resistance heroes such as Anton de Kom, Papa Koenders and Bram Behr. He received the Anna Blaman Prize in 2022 for his entire oeuvre. His Boekenweekessay Boto Banja of het geheime genootschap der dansende schrijvers (Boto Banja, or: the secret society of the dancing writers) was published in 2023.
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Tsitsi Dangarembga

(Zimbabwe, 1959) is an award-winning writer of novels, plays and short stories as well as a successful filmmaker. She began writing stories and plays in the early eighties, followed by her debut novel Nervous Conditions (1988). After studying medicine and psychology in England and Zimbabwe, she switched careers after moving to Germany in 1989 to study at the Berlin film academy. In the following years she produced, wrote and directed films and documentaries that were screened to acclaim in Zimbabwe and at international film festivals. Her novel The Book of Not was published in 2006 and in 2018 This Mournable Body, which was shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize. Dangarembga's novels form a poignant trilogy about the protagonist, Tambuzai, as well drawing as a raw and candid portrait of Zimbabwean society.


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Chris Keulemans

(Tunisia, 1960) is a writer, essayist, traveller and popular panel moderator. He has published fiction and non-fiction; was the director of the debating platform and venue De Balie; and was founder of the literary bookshop Perdu and the cultural centre De Tolhuistuin (all in Amsterdam). He performed with Enkidu Khaled in their jointly created documentary play Bagdad. Due to his curiosity about how artists recreate their cities after a crisis, he travelled to Sarajevo, Beirut, Tirana, Algiers, New York, Kiev, Jakarta and Qamishlo. At the invitation of PAX, he wrote Srebrenica & PAX 1995-2020, an overview of 25 years of support to the Association of Women of Srebrenica by the IKV and PAX in response to the genocide in Bosnia. In 2021 he published Gastvrijheid (Hospitality), in which he explores the art of hospitality through a mix of travel stories, observations, memories and imagery.
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Mona Eltahawy

(Egypt, 1967) is a feminist author, commentator and disruptor of the patriarchy. Her first book, Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2105), targeted patriarchies in the Middle East and North Africa, and her second, The Seven Necessary Sins For Women and Girls (2019), took her disruption to the global level. Her commentaries have appeared in media around the world and she creates video essays under the nom de plume FEMINIST GIANT, which is also the name of the newsletter of which she is founder and editor-in-chief.
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Nazmiye Oral

is a writer, actress and theatre artist. Her 2011 debut novel Zehra features a Turkish girl who is disowned because she is different. All her work poses one central question: how does one relate to those with different opinions without denying oneself? As an actress, Nazmiye Oral performed in Oesters van Nam Kee, Combat, Hertenkamp and Baantjer. She also toured the Netherlands, Belgium and US with Gesluierde Monologen (Veiled Monologues). She wrote one of these monologues, about a wife who loses contact with her husband. In 2010 Retour Hollands Spoor premiered, her second play for the Nationale Theatre, which she wrote with Gerardjan Rijnders. In 2020, she was a featured guest in prominent Dutch TV interview program Zomergasten (Summer Guests).
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Vamba Sherif

(Liberia, 1973) is a novelist, essayist, journalist and film critic. His debut novel Land of the Fathers (1999) is partly based on his grandmother's stories and deals with the clash between slaves returning from the US and other Liberians. The novel The Black Napoleon (2015) portrays Samori Touré, who founded the Wasulu-empire in western Africa in the 19th century. His journalism, including film reviews, appears in publications such as The New York Times, Trouw and One World. Together with  Ebissé Rouw he compiled Zwart (Black, 2018), a collection of stories by Afro-European authors from the Low Countries. Ongekende liefde (Unprecedented Love), in which he tells his life story to his ten-year-old daughter Bendu, was published in 2021. Sherif's historical novel The Emperor’s Son (2023) follows Zaiwulo, a young prodigy who trains under sage Talata of the Haidarah family in Musadu. Entangled in the intrigues of Emperor Samori, the 'Black Napoleon,' Zaiwulo matures into a formidable soldier.
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Kjell Hoexum

is a young poet from The Hague who took part during the 2017 Winternachten festival in Spot on Young Poets, the educational project of Writers Unlimited, poet Diann van Faassen and Meermanno Museum | House of the Book. This project constitutes poetry workshops at Hague high schools, where students are given lessons in poetry and recitation. Kjell presented his poem during Winternachten 2017. At the time he was a pupil at De Populier in The Hague, and now studies at the Nederlandse Fotovakschool Rotterdam.

Mirle Wittekoek

is a young poet from The Hague who won the Young Campert Prize during the 2019 Winternachten festival. In the fall of 2018, she participated in Spot on Young Poets, the educational project of Writers Unlimited, poet Diann van Faassen and Meermanno Museum | House of the Book. This project constitutes poetry workshops at Hague high schools, where students are given lessons in poetry and recitation. Mirle presented her poem during Winternachten 2019. One of the three finalists, she won the Young Campert Prize for best student poet during the Schrijversfeest (Writers' Feast). She was a pupil at Dalton Den Haag, and studies Social Work at the Haagse Hogeschool.
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Xiu Bin van Lier

is a young poet who was a finalist for the Young Campert Prize during the 2018 Winternachten festival. In the fall of 2017, she participated in Spot on Young Poets, the educational project of Writers Unlimited, poet Diann van Faassen and Meermanno Museum | House of the Book. This project constitutes poetry workshops at Hague high schools, where students are given lessons in poetry and recitation. Xiu Bin presented her poem during the Schrijversfeest (Writers' Feast) of Winternachten 2018 as one of the three finalists competing for the Young Campert Prize for best student poet. She is a pupil at Dalton Den Haag.
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Stian Olesen

is a young poet from The Hague who won the Young Campert Prize during the 2020 Winternachten festival. In the fall of 2019, he participated in Spot on Young Poets, the educational project of Writers Unlimited, poet Diann van Faassen and Meermanno Museum | House of the Book. This project constitutes poetry workshops at Hague high schools, where students are given lessons in poetry and recitation. Stian presented his poem during Winternachten 2020. One of the three finalists, he won the Young Campert Prize for best student poet during the Schrijversfeest (Writers' Feast). He is a pupil at Vrije School Den Haag.

Noemí Lorenzo

is a young poet from The Hague who was a finalist for the Young Campert Prize during the 2019 Winternachten festival. She participated three times in Spot on Young Poets, the educational project of Writers Unlimited, poet Diann van Faassen and Meermanno Museum | House of the Book. This project constitutes poetry workshops at Hague high schools, where students are given lessons in poetry and recitation. Noemí presented her poem during the Schrijversfeest (Writers' Feast) of the Winternachten festival 2019. During the Winternachten festival 2020, she was given an Honourable Mention for her third poem. She was a pupil at Dalton Den Haag, and studies Chemistry at the Leiden University.

Paula Golunska

is a young poet who won the first Young Campert Prize during the 2017 Winternachten festival. In the fall of 2016, she participated in Spot on Young Poets, the educational project of Writers Unlimited, poet Diann van Faassen and Meermanno Museum | House of the Book. This project constitutes poetry workshops at Hague high schools, where students are given lessons in poetry and recitation. Paula presented her poem during Winternachten 2017. One of the three finalists, she won the Young Campert Prize for best student poet during the Schrijversfeest (Writers' Feast). She was a pupil at Edith Stein College in The Hague, and now studies at Wageningen University & Research.
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Sumai Yahya

is a young poet from The Hague who won the Young Campert Prize during the 2018 Winternachten festival. In the fall of 2017, he participated in Spot on Young Poets, the educational project of Writers Unlimited, the Hague Writers Guild and Meermanno Museum | House of the Book. This project constitutes poetry workshops at Hague high schools, where students are given lessons in poetry and recitation. Sumai presented his poem during Winternachten 2018. One of the three finalists, he won the Young Campert Prize for best student poet during the Writers' Feast. He was at the time a pupil of the Edith Stein College in The Hague.
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Amanou Jansen

is a young poet from The Hague who competed in the finals of the Young Campert Prize during the 2020 Winternachten festival. In the fall of 2019, Amanou participated in Spot on Young Poets, the educational project of Writers Unlimited, poet Diann van Faassen and Meermanno Museum | House of the Book. This project constitutes poetry workshops at Hague high schools, where students are given lessons in poetry and recitation. Amanou presented a poem during Winternachten 2020 and was second finalist for the Young Campert Prize for best student poet during the Schrijversfeest (Writers' Feast). Amanou was a pupil at Dalton Den Haag, and now studies Biochemical Sciences at the Leiden University.

Diann van Faassen

(The Netherlands) is a poet. writing teacher, city guide and programme maker from The Hague. She gives poetry and performance workshops at schools and cultural organisations. Diann's work has been included in various anthologies and often has a link to the city of The Hague. In the time that remains, she takes you as a city guide on a poetic tour of The Hague, providing the most beautiful spots with surprising stories. For the Writers Unlimited, she guides pupils from schools in The Hague at the educational initiative De Stem van de Stad (The Voice of the City). Diann walks with pupils through The Hague and tells stories. She inspires them to write a Very Short Story about their vision of and connection with the city. Diann then introduces the pupils at their performance in the festival.

Instagram @diannvanfaassen
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Zsófia Bán

(Brazil, 1957) grew up in Brazil and Hungary. A writer, essayist, and critic, she made her fiction debut in 2007 with Esti iskola (Night School: A Reader for Grownups, 2019), followed by Amikor még csak az állatok éltek (When There Were Only Animals, 2012; Als nur die Tiere lebten, 2014). Her most recent volume of short stories is Lehet lélegezni! (Keep Breathing, 2019; Weiter atmen, 2020). Her fiction has been translated into languages including English, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. Bán is also a prolific writer of essays and reviews of literature, art and visual culture. Her essay collections include The Turul Bird and the Dinosaur (2018), Exposed Memories: Family Pictures in Private and Collective Memory (2010, a co-edited volume), Test-Packing (2008), and Amerikáner (2000). Her most recent non-fiction book is Der Sommer unseres Missvergnügens (The Summer of Our Discontent, 2019, transl. by Terézia Mora). She lives and works in Budapest, where she is associate professor in the Department of American Studies at Eötvös Loránd University.
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Shishani

(Namibia, 1988) is a singer-songwriter loved for her smooth and powerful voice. Her roots are Namibian and Belgian, but she grew up mainly in the Netherlands. Her work brings these worlds together. Her music is comforting and has a strong thread of social consciousness running through it. She founded the all-female band Miss Catharsis in 2019. Her anthropology (BA) and musicology (MA) studies focused on contemporary urban Namibian music.
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Laura van Dolron

(Netherlands, 1976) expresses her idealistic self as a writer, theatre producer, director, performer and "action writer." She created her own theatrical category: stand-up philosophy. She doesn't make theatre about a better world, but makes a better world within the theatre. Van Dolron writes almost all of her own plays, and the scripts of Liefhebben (Loving) and WIJ (WE) have been published in book form. She often performs alone on stage, and sometimes with other actors. She also directs theatre performances. Since 2015 Van Dolron has performed as an "action writer," as well. At various gatherings, from theatre festivals to police workshops, she reflects live on what she observes and, with an outsider's gaze, sums up the event in clever and funny language.
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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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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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Gil Gomes Leal

(1991) is choreographer and dancer. He followed dance studies at the ROC in Utrecht and was named 2013 world champion of experimental dance at the French Juste Debout competition. In 2016 he founded the dance company Amenti in Rotterdam, where he leads movement workshops and performs. He's been a member of the ISH Dance Collective since 2015. His debut performance Ayahuasca premiered in 2019.
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Mirthe Frese

is a moderator, writer and theatre professional. She created successful program series for De Balie in Amsterdam, such as De Vrijheidslezing (The Freedom Lecture), Grote Denkers (Great Thinkers) and Generatie IK (Generation ME). In 2018, she wrote and performed her first solo performance, Retourtje Polen (Return to Poland), for Theater Na de Dam. She's currently writing a historical family novel about her Jewish-Moluccan roots (expected in 2021, Nijgh & Van Ditmar publishers). Whether writing, creating theatre, hosting a debate or curating a program, her starting point is always bringing together a diversity of stories, histories and opinions.
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Babah Tarawally

(Sierra Leone, 1972) is a writer and journalist. In his essayistic book Gevangen in zwartwit-denken. En hoe we kunnen ontsnappen (Trapped in black-and-white thinking. And how we can escape, 2018) he describes how this mechanism determined his thinking for a long time, until he let it go. He pleads for a Civil Rights Movement, inspired by Ubuntu, the African philosophy that revolves around giving and taking, and sharing in groups to strengthen the 'us'. In 1995 he fled Sierra Leone. In 2010 his novel De god met de blauwe ogen (The god with blue eyes) appeared. He was programme coordinator of the Winternachten Festival 2012 and wrote columns in One World; he is also project leader at De ToekomstAcademie (The Future Academy) that is part of New Dutch Connections, an organisation that motivates and inspires (former) refugees. In 2016 he published his second book, De verloren hand (The Lost Hand), a novel about the experiences of asylum seekers and their struggle to overcome traumas.
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Babeth Fonchie

(1993) is a poet, word artist and lawyer. Searches and the raw version of life are central themes in her work. She challenges you to look past first impressions. Since Fall 2019, she has been resident poet of online feminist media platform Lilith. Magazine ELLE published two poems she wrote about the death of George Floyd. Her work has also been published in De Groene Amsterdammer, online magazine Hard // Hoofd and literary magazine Kluger Hans. In 2020, she was part of the Op de Schans program at festival Into the Great Wide Open, and was selected for Vers van het Mes and for the Schrijfresidentie (Writing Residence), initiatives of deBuren, the Flemish-Dutch house for culture and debate. Fonchie is a legal advisor to the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Sciences. She worked for, among others, the Permanent Representation of the Netherlands at the United Nations and the European Union.
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Mignon Nusteling

(Dordrecht, 1991) is an artist and poet, but also known for her Instagram account @Mignonnus, where she unabashedly addresses topics such as art, autism, cyberbullying, sexuality and feminism. One of her missions is to make art accessible and she carries this out both on- and offline. In 2017 she published the illustrated collection of poems Zon- & Sodeflikstralen and in 2020 her personal city guide about Dordrecht: De Maaspiraat. She works autonomously, but also illustrates under the alias @StudioStout. The illustrations of Studio Stout are recognizable by their bright colours and black lines, and are made both freely and on commission. In 2021 she made an illustration for a poetic letter by Annemarie Ensor for the Winternachten festival programme Erfstukken (Heirlooms).
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Jessica Bacuna

(1996) studied illustration at AKV | Sint Joost in Den Bosch. Her illustrations have appeared in Trouw, Mest Magazine, Hard//hoofd and One World, among others. In her work she responds to things that fascinate her such as social phenomena that raise questions. To be able to experiment with the use of different materials she makes traditional illustrations with for instance wax crayons, oil pastels, gouache or coloured paper. In 2021 she illustrated a poem by Babeth Fonchie for the Winternachten festival programme Erfstukken (Heirlooms).
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Rachel Sender

(Spain, 1981) is an illustrator and a ceramist. She makes editorial illustrations, works with ceramics and teaches at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam. In 2021, she made an illustration for a short story by Jens Meijen for the Winternachten festival programme Erfstukken (Heirlooms).
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Fleur Kotten

(2000) is a multidisciplinary artist and teaches art history and drawing. She studies at the Breitner Academy of the Amsterdam University of Arts. In her paintings, illustrations, laser cuts, installations and sculptures, she searches for an image that exudes a certain harmony in form, colour or rhythm. In 2021 she illustrated a short story by Eva Meijer for the Winternachten festival-programme Erfstukken (Heirlooms).
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Kenneth Aidoo

(1988) makes films, paintings, drawings and video installations. He graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in 2019 with a series of portraits, exploring the everyday experiences he had in the Netherlands. Other topics in his work include the triangular connection between Ghana, the Netherlands and Suriname, and what it is like to have a bi-cultural identity. He has been nominated for the Royal Award for Modern Painting in 2021. For the Winternachten festival programme Erfstukken (Heirlooms) he made an illustration for a short story by Babah Tarawally.
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Discover

29 September 2026

De gesmoorde stem van de vrouw door Alicja Gescinska

Dit korte essay werd geschreven door Alicja Gescinska voor het programma Vrouwen (her)schrijven geschiedenis op 14 september, over de stem van vrouwen in hun streven naar vrijheid, soms met gevaar voor eigen leven.

15 September 2026

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