Writing On
Readings & conversations with authors from conflict areas

Inmitten der Zerstörung Inmitten der Zerstörung © Rami Bakhos

Authors from Syria, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Germany, and Canada on arriving in new cultures

The Gunda Werner Institute at the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the catalyst organisation affiliated with the German Green Party, asked authors who have recently fled to Germany to escape the conflicts in their home countries for their wishes. “Writing on” was their answer – the starting point of the eponymous project. Leaving home does not only mean leaving a specific culture or lifestyle behind but also language, identity and a career. The project wants to open the door into the German literary economy and provide a one-on-one professional and literary exchange between the authors writing for the project and their German colleagues.
 
The authors and organisers of “Writing On” will be guests at the Goethe-Institut Toronto throughout 2018. In conversations with Canadian writers they will touch on issues and difficulties authors seeking refuge in Germany are facing in re-establishing themselves and their voices. It will ask questions about literary exchange and cultural identity, dreams, hopes and opportunities, and practical assistance.

 “The project is bold, it is brave, it is not precise but it works.” – Tanja Dückers (author and project participant)

“Writing on provides with translation, conversations with German-speaking colleagues as well as through the online-publishing and print what the name implies: continuation, perpetuation, extension, expansion.” – Die Zeit
 
Invited international authors:
Galal Al-Ahmadi (Saudi Arabia/Yemen/Germany), Tanja Dückers (Germany), Rabab Haidar (Syria), Noor Kanj (Syria/Lebanon/Germany), Svenja Leiber (Germany), Mariam Meetra (Afghanistan/Germany), Antje Rávik Strubel (Germany)


Readings in English, German, Arabic, Farsi. Discussions in English. 
Free admission 


Texts (in German, Arabic and Farsi) can be found on the main portal weiterschreiben.jetzt; the Goethe-Institut Toronto is commissioning English translations for this series in Canada.

"Weiter Schreiben. A portal for literature and music from conflict areas" is a project by the WIR MACHEN DAS/wearedoingit e.V., supported by the Capital Cultural Fund and the Goethe-Institut, in collaboration with the Gundad-Werner-Institut at the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the Allianz Kulturstiftung.

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