16 November 2022 | 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM

“Toplocentrala” Centre for Contemporary Arts, Hall 1

Participants:

Biliana Kourtasheva (Bulgaria) - Ph.D. in Theory and History of Literature, Associate Professor at New Bulgarian University
Vladimir Arsenijević (Serbia) - writer, translator, editor, publicist, and Creative Director of the Crocodile Festiva
Vladimir Jankovski (North Macedonia) - writer, translator, and editor at Goten Publishing
Kate Griffin (UK) - Associate Programme Director at the National Centre for Writing in Norwich, a literary consultant on projects in the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and Latin America
Hanna Komar (Belarus) - poet, translator, and activist

➠ Moderator - Yana Genova - literary manager, Director of the Next Page Foundation, and initiator of Sofia Literature and Translation House

➠ The discussion will be in English

➠ Free entrance

━ The Literary Talks in November will be dedicated to commenting the literature over the past year. The main event will be the discussion with participants from five countries working in different fields of literature. As the title implies, "2022 in Literature: based on a true story" will draw attention on literary trends, emphasizing both global literary developments and more local patterns in the participants' countries.

━ The way literature interacts with the present will be among the main themes of the discussion, but it will also touch on:

▩ how intensely does the "true story" influence and invade the creative process;

▩ is more non-fiction really being written;

▩ is autofiction a preferred genre, a question that gained prominence in view of this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature winner, Annie Ernaux;

▩ the popularity of dystopias, eco-fiction, and science fiction, which create possible future worlds, but actually address the problems of the present;

▩ what changes in literature are brought by war, pandemic, environmental issues, and refugee crises;

▩ whether the inclusion of reality in fiction adds extra value;

▩ can authors write about things they have not experienced?

━ Added to this expansive thematic field will be questions, concerning interesting examples of literary events today and the changes that have occurred after two years of almost no live audience interactions.

━ The discussion will be an invitation for a dialogue both with literary professionals and the general public that follows contemporary literature.