articulate in New York

My friend Jan Valk is curating a series of events featuring young German-language writers at the Goethe Institut in New York, called "articulate". I'm not quite sure whether that's a verb or an adjective here. Anyway, instead of constructing some kind of artificial link between the writers - writers from the former East, writers with a background in physics, writers with Polish grandfathers, whatever - the series just presents people who are doing interesting stuff. I like the idea.

articulate—a series about new tendencies in contemporary German literature. The event series articulate spotlights the young German-language literature scene. By trying not to construct a generation consisting of these highly varied exponents, the series purposely focuses on its diversity. The guests of articulate traverse borders in the biographical and stylistic sense, and are connected only by the hybrid forms of their career paths and their joy in experimenting with different medial forms of expression. They are narrators, lyricists or dramatists, filmmakers, translators, journalists, and literary mediators. Above all, they always take on more than one role at once—sharing this polymorphism in their ways of life, work, and expression. On five nights in 2011, the authors will meet John Wray and—after a short reading—start a conversation with the host. They will talk about their diverse and multi-faceted involvement in the literary and artistic world as a principle career strategy, and their work and survival in the current cultural scene.

If you're quick and I'm not getting my time zones muddled, you can catch Peggy Mädler there tonight. Sadly, you may have missed Thomas Pletzinger and Daniela Dröscher, but you can still make it to Katharina Adler on November 8 and Milo Rau on December 8.