Turkish literature home and abroad

Margot Dijkgraaf talks to the Turkish writer and journalist Asli Tohumcu, the Turkish- Dutch writer Sadik Yemni and the Turkish-Dutch poet Tuncay Çinibulak. In English.

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Information

Date and time Friday 18 January 2008 20:00 tot 21:00 uur
Location Filmhuis - zaal 7

The Turkish writer and journalist Asli Tohumcu now lives in The Hague as a guestwriter for Kosmopolis Den Haag and AD/Haagsche Courant. She writes articles for the newspaper on Turkish migrants in The Hague. The articles are moving, often about a Turkey that no longer exists. Sadik Yemni has lived in Amsterdam for years, and as a writer he is more famous in Turkey than in The Netherlands. Tuncay Çinibulak is a writer and a poet, and since 2005 he is editor-in-chief of the Dutch/Turkish business- and culturemagazine TULPIA. The three writers read from their work and talk about being Turkish in the Netherlands, and about developments in Turkish literature in Turkey and the Netherlans. Hosted by Margot Dijkgraaf. In English.

This programme is a substitute for an earlier announced programme with the Turkish poet Bejan Matur, who cancelled her participation at short notice.

Line-up

Tuncay Çinibulak

(Turkey, 1970) has been editor-in-chief since 2005 of the Dutch/Turkish business & cultural magazine TULPIA. Previously Çinibulak worked as a journalist for some time with several Dutch television companies and daily newspapers as well as writing columns for Metro and the Amsterdamse Stadsblad. Çinibulak is also a poet. His short stries and poems have been collected in Een hand uit de nacht (A Hand from the Night, 2002) and in Het land in mij. Nieuwe Verhalen van Jonge Schrijvers op de Grens van Twee Werelden (The Country Within. New Short Stories by Young Writers on the border of Two Worlds, 1996). He has also published his poems in literary magazines, Rood Koper, among others. Çinibulak has read a great deal from his own work, particularly during remembrance day 2002. Çinibulak has lived in the Netherlands since 1980.
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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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Sadik Yemni

(Istanbul 1951) came to the Netherlands in 1975, found a job as a bridgeman for the NS (National railways) and during a period of seven years developed into a writer. Since then he has written various stories, plays, literary detectives and novels, which have been published in Turkish - the language in which he writes - as well as in Dutch. For instance : De roos van Amsterdam (The rose of Amsterdam) , De amulet (The amulet), De vierde ster (The fourth star), Muhabbet Evi (2006) and Durum 429 (2007) appeared in Turkish.
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Asli Tohumcu

(Germany, 1974) is a Turkish writer and journalist. In invitation of the newspaper AD/Haagsche Courant and Kosmopolis Den Haag she lives as a guest writer in The Hague to write articles on the Turkish migrants in the city. She was born in Leverkusen and moved to Turkey when she was five. Tohumcu schrijft literary reviews for Turkish newspapers and makes a culture programme on Turkish state television. She published a collection of short stories (Abis, 2003) and the novella Yok Bana Sensiz Hayat (No Life without You). The latter will be published soon in English translation.
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