Wordfest: Sane Takes on an Insane World
Author Jenny Erpenbeck in Conversation
Jenny Erpenbeck
| Photo: wordfest.com
This timely showcase features an uncensored conversation with authors whose works explore the vulnerability of human rights in an increasingly polarized world. Be prepared to be challenged, as they delve into hot-button topics such as the refugee crisis, extremist politics, and genocide.Jenny Erpenbeck is a German opera director and writer. Born in East Berlin in 1967, her work has been translated into 17 languages. Her novel The End of Days won the 2014 Hans Fallada Prize and the 2015 Independent Foreign Prize. Her novel Go, Went, Gone won the Strega European Prize, the annual award given to a novel in Italian translation by a European author who has received national recognition in their home country.
Payam Akhavan is a professor of International Law at McGill University, a member of the International Court of Arbitration, and a former UN prosecutor at The Hague. Akhavan was born in Tehran, Iran, and migrated to Canada with his family as a child.
Denise Chong is the 2017/18 Canadian Writer-in-Residence at the University of Calgary. An internationally-published author of four works of literary non-fiction, she is best known for her family memoir, The Concubine’s Children, a Globe and Mail bestseller for 93 weeks.
M. NourbeSe Philip is a poet, essayist, novelist, playwright, and former lawyer. She is a Fellow of the Guggenheim and Rockefeller (Bellagio) Foundations and the MacDowell Colony. She is the recipient of many awards, including the Casa de las Americas prize (Cuba). Philip lives in Toronto.
Jenny Erpenbeck at Wordfest is a guest of the Goethe-Institut.