A Book to Call Home with Athena Farrokhzad

Sayonara Stutgard interviewed Athena Farrokhzad about the book that brought her home.

Information

Date and time Friday 17 June 2022 20:35 tot 20:55 uur
Location Paard Café
Price 29,50
15,- (CJP, Students, Ooievaarspas)

Following up on the festival theme Whose House is This?, in A Book to Come Home to we asked one festival author the following question: which book brought you home? The answers could go in all directions. Perhaps the author chose a book that describes a house that feels like his/her own home, or a place where he/she wishes to live. But it could also be a book whose style of writing or manner of thinking makes the author feel at home. Or it could be the relief of finally reading a story in which the protagonist reflects his/her appearance. The program was a peek into the bookshelves as well as the soul of each author.

Athena Farrokhzad

(Iran, 1983) is a Swedish poet, playwright, translator, literary critic and feminist. Her family escaped Iran in the eighties. She is an important voice in Scandinavian societal debate. Her debut collection Vitsvit (2013) was an international success and translated into 12 languages (into English as White Blight). It gives a voice to several members of a refugee family and shows how themes such as migration, integration, racism, revolution and war influence their lives. Farrokhzad also published two anthologies, Manualen with Tova Gerrge and Ett tunt underlag with the poetry group G=T=B=R=G, both in 2009. She was editor of the queer poetry collection Omslag with Linn Hansén and organized literary events such as Queerlitt, Demafor and World Poetry Day. The collection Trado, which she wrote with the Romanian poet Svetlana Cârstean, was published in 2016, followed by the collection I rörelse in 2019. She is also the literary critic of the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.
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Sayonara Stutgard

(Netherlands, 1988) writes poetry and short stories. She studied Dutch language and literature and lives, as she herself says, mostly in her own library, although she also regularly works in the Utrecht Library. "There is an acute shortage of topical literature that does justice to the diversity of the Netherlands. To ensure that all readers can recognize themselves, the book trade must seek out a balance of stories," she wrote in a Dutch newspaper column. She co-founded the intersectional, feminist publishing house Chaos, which strives to bring more diversity to the Dutch literary scene. She also works as an editor and completed her first translation of a picture book (De binnenkant van mij - original title Skin Again - by bell hooks, published by ROSE stories). Stutgard's work has appeared on Cipher Magazine and Samplekanon, in the magazine nY and, of course, with Chaos publishers.
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