VPRO De Avonden Live: Ngwatilo Mawiyoo and Ahmad Tohari

Interviews with these writers from Kenya and Indonesia at the festival, live radio. In English.

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Information

Date and time Friday 18 January 2013 22:15 tot 22:40 uur
Location Theater aan het Spui - De Kas

Interviews with these writers from Kenya and Indonesia at the festival for the VPRO radio programme De Avonden Live. Visitors are allowed to peek freely and listen in. In English.

Ngwatilo Mawiyoo

(Kenya, 1983) as a child took singing and acting lessons. Now she combines poetry, music and the theatre. In 2011 she recorded the album Introducing Ngwatilo. In Kenya she is called the high priestess of the poetry performance because of her appearance, her performance and the themes she brings up. She performed at various festivals in Africa and Europe. In her Puesic Project she mixes music with poetry, dance and film. Her first collection of poetry Blue Mothertongue (2010) deals with the life in her native city of Nairobi and the African diaspora. For her latest project she wants to turn the stories of twenty rural families into poetry. The result will find its audience through radio, the international media and the digital highway.
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Ahmad Tohari

(Indonesia, 1948) is considered one of the most important Indonesian writers of today. His novels A Shooting Star at Dawn and The Dancer appeared in Dutch, German, English, Japanese and Chinese translation. The novels are part of the trilogy Ronggeng Dukuh Paruk, about an 11-year old village girl who works as a dancer and prostitute and who, in the unruly days of the 1965 coup unwillingly became the mascot of the Communist Party. Tohari grew up in the Javanese village of Tinggarjaya. He developed his own vision on Indonesian Islam, thereby honouring and preserving local Indonesian traditions. Early 1970s he moved to Jakarta where he worked for the newspaper Harian Merdeka and the magazine Amanah. He was already writing short stories, poems and essays. After having lived in Jakarta for two decades he returned to his source of inspiration, the countryside. In 2009 Tohari founded the magazine Ancas (Vision) in his region of birth to promote the local language, Banyumasan. In addition, he runs an Islamic school, promotes Javan folk art and is an advisor for the Ministry of Culture.
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Maarten Westerveen

(Groningen, 1981) studied History at the University of Utrecht. In 2007 he started working for the VPRO, first for Geert Mak's TV-documentary 'In Europa', after that for radio talkshow on culture De Avonden. Westerveen made a few radio documentaries and a radio play. In 2012 he worked on his first interview marathon on Radio 1.
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Jeroen van Kan

(Hoorn, 1968) is a journalist who started his career at local radio station Amsterdam FM; after that he became editor of De Digitale Stad, hosted AT5's newshow and talkshows. Then he returned to making radio: first at BNR Nieuwsradio and afterwards at VPRO's programme De Avonden which he presented every Monday and Friday. Since 2015 Van Kan is radio news show host at national public broadcaster NOS; he also can be heard as voice over during TV news shows. Spring 2016, he hosted literary TV programme Boeken. Next to this, Van Kan is active as editor of literary magazines. Until 2007 he was part of the editorial board of De Tweede Ronde. Afterwards he moved to literary magazine Tirade. Together with Wim Brands he is co-editor of Nederland. Een objectief zelfportret in 51 voorwerpen (The Netherlands. An objective autoportrait in 51 objects), a collection of texts about typically Dutch objects by the same number of writers.
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