On Literary Events

Literary readings are a big thing in Germany. Audiences are incredibly patient and will sit through two-hour events composed largely of monotonous recital with hardly any shuffling of bottoms on seats. Then they will go home without asking any questions, not even the question-that-is-a-statement kind. Compare and contrast with the UK events I've attended, where the reading aloud parts are kept to a minimum and it's all about asking the author's advice on getting published. So it's little wonder, perhaps, that Berlin's literary event culture is split cleanly into German and non-German. That means that when an Anglophone writer is translated into German, their events here will usually have a largely German audience, while English events with smaller names will be packed to the gills.

I blame the format, which is fairly standardized for some reason (inertia?). Writer and moderator and actor share a stage. Translator is not present, or if so then only in the audience. Writer reads one page from the original, actor reads interminably long section from the translation while writer stares into space, moderator fails to mention translator, brief conversation between writer and moderator, which is translated as it goes along, while the actor stares into space. Actor reads another incredibly long passage. Everyone goes home. If you understand the original language you don't get a great deal out of this format – which is why, I suspect, audiences at the Berlin International Literature Festival are not usually very international.

So we're trying something slightly different at the Salon Karl-Marx-Buchhandlung. Under the heading "Literatur im Original" we're going to do events with Anglophone writers but without the actors. Because what's the point in having writers come all the way here if all they do is stare into space half the time? While I'm pretty certain most Berliners now magically speak much better English than twenty years ago, of course we can't expect everyone to follow complex literary texts, so we're going to project the translations onto the wall to help them understand – and also to showcase the translator's work and encourage people to buy the translations, which is kind of the point of these events. So there's more time for me to talk to the writer on stage and also more time for the audience to ask her advice on getting published.

We start with the writer and sociologist of art Sarah Thornton, who'll be talking about her fascinating book 33 Artists in 3 Acts this coming Wednesday. And in case you can't read the German blurb about the event itself, here it is in English, because I really want you to come anyway and meet German-speaking art and book lovers:

Wednesday, 10 June at 7.30 pm.

Sarah Thornton
33 Artists in 3 Acts
Moderator: Katy Derbyshire
The event will take place mainly in English

What does it mean to be an artist in the 21st century? Are artists entrepreneurs or entertainers? How do they stay “authentic”? In her book 33 ARTISTS IN 3 ACTS, the art expert and sociologist SARAH THORNTON takes us to the superstars of the international art scene, presenting 33 artists including Ai Weiwei, Jeff Koons and Marina Abramovic. Focusing on three aspects – politics, kinship and craft – she looks not only at their studios, but also at their living rooms and their bank accounts. She’s there when ideas come about and great works take shape. With a scathing eye for detail, she analyzes their many different answers to the question: What is an artist?

Cooperation partner: S. Fischer Verlag
Tickets: 8,- € /  6,- €
Reservations via: 030 29 777 89-10.

See you there.

Two Free Literary Events in Berlin

Having moaned and groaned about funding for literary events earlier this week, I wanted to tell you about a couple of Berlin things happening for free, and presumably without funding, that look pretty exciting to me.

The first is Fiction Canteen's Open Mike event this coming Wednesday, 21 January, in the old bus garage canteen in Wedding, Uferstraße 8-11 (don't give up looking; it's tucked around the back to the right of the piano workshop). Transfiction say:

Bring a text – poetry, prose, or an excerpt from your novel in progress. Translations into English welcome. The rules, as usual: turn up at 8pm, take a number, read for 5 minutes, then afterwards mingle and have a drink! Event is in English.

And the second event is run by people I don't actually know (which is odd, don't you think?). They say:

books without covers is a new reading series in Berlin for German and English literature.

We shift the focus from cover to content, concentrating on texts rather than on biographies, bibliographies and blurbs. Avoiding to judge a book by its cover,  actors will be reading the texts.

The first reading will be on the 4th of February 2015.

At Galerie Anna25, Schönleinstraße 25. Readers: Dorothee Höhn, Mandy Neukirchner and Marlene Krursel // Texts by Adrian Kasnitz, Peter Lünenschloß, Rebecca Drutschmann, Silvia Groeger, Valentin Moritz and Verena Keller. 

I strongly suspect this particular episode will be all German literature, but don't let that put you off.

Both of which go to show that the good people of Berlin are doing marvellous, unusual things all the time without getting paid for it, and hooray for them. Or maybe they're paying the actors. I hope they are. I hope they're paying the actors a really good fee and the whole thing's being funded by a philanthropist who made her fortune by inventing the cereal bar or something equally innocuous.

How to Fund Events?

The German-speaking countries have a fairly unique breadth of literary events. In Berlin, for example, you can choose from probably about a dozen readings most nights, from two poets at the back of a bookshop to a theatre full of fans drooling over a big-name novelist. Formats range from the sublime to the ridiculous, one of my least favourite being the two-hour session with three critics and one poor writer, while the audience wishes they'd brought along extra cushions.

German writers tend to be on the road a lot (and surprised when they don't get invited to tour the UK to promote their books in translation). Readings, you see, are a source of income for them. They can be a bit coy about prices, but I'd put a decent fee for a reading at around €300. It's hard impossible to make that much money back on the door without charging forbiddingly high prices. Add on the hours worked by all the other people involved – moderator, venue staff, organizers, etc. – and it becomes a mug's game.

This is something I've been thinking about a lot recently. I want to start an event series bringing together people writing in English and German in Berlin. But I don't want to ask people who usually earn €300 to appear on stage for free, or indeed for significantly less. For me, that meant applying for public subsidies. My first application was rejected and I hear back about the second one in February. Keep your fingers crossed that Berlin-Mitte's cultural funding will stretch to such a non-worthy undertaking. I have a Plan C up my sleeve if all else fails, though.

The UV - Independent Publishers' Reading is a major event to coincide with the Leipzig Book Fair in March. And the organizers are facing the same questions – their funding application for this year was rejected and they were advised to put the prices up (implicitly, I'd say that would also mean putting the authors' fees down). They solved the problem in 2013 with a crowdfunding campaign, but like me they seem to be in two minds about the crowdfunding principle.

My objection is that I think it favours snazzy, gimmicky projects that attract attention but don't necessarily – how can I say this? – make the literary world a better place. Yes, I know not everything has to do that. I know twenty people going home with a smile on their face is a fine thing, too, and that's part of what I want to do. The UV people ask: "Does crowdfunding really offer liberation from financial dependencies – or does the principle of begging to the crowd contribute to the privatization of a societal problem – the under-financing of culture – and make self-exploitation and exploitation of friends even more chronic?"

The option I see happening in the UK is sponsoring. I detest the idea of running, I don't know, "Coke Zero Book Nites" – where I and other people invest our passion and a corporation gets the credit and the literary credentials. Bleuch. Happily, I can't think of any examples in Berlin, although Readux events do sometimes involve free drinks donated by alcohol producers, and I admit I've drunk more than my fair share on occasion. Ach. Maybe I'll think it over properly when Coke Zero really does come knocking.

So what are the UV people doing to fund their huge eighteen-writer event? They're launching their own funding campaign: Make Your Own Superpublisher. I have to say, I don't quite get the difference between this and an ordinary crowdfunding thing, but then I've got a terrible cold and my brain's not working very well. Either way, you can purchase either postcard sets of sort of dress-up-doll publishers (slim, white, kinda male, trousered but I suppose you could colour him/her in or alter him/her in other ways) plus adhesive accessories, or life-size cardboard cutout publishers with stick-on facial and head hair, shirt and of course glasses. It's quite funny. I mean, it won't solve the problem once and for all and it seems to involve quite a lot of up-front effort by someone or other (file under: self-exploitation) – but it's a very eye-catching way to raise the issue.

So: more public funding for culture, please, and until then hooray for all the crazy people who do this literary event stuff out of the goodness of their hearts. If you've been looking for a cardboard-cutout of a publisher, this is your chance. Darts not included.

No man's land Launch!!!!

We're launching the ninth issue of no man's land, the magazine featuring first-ever translations of fiction and poetry by some of the finest writers working in German today. This Friday! In Berlin!

This time we have some astoundingly good prose (I know because I helped to choose it) and some astoundingly good poetry (although I have nothing to do with that side of things). Please come and join us to celebrate the general astounding quality of German-language literature in excellent translation.

no man's land # 9
Launch Reading
December 5, 8:30 p.m.
Saint Georges Bookshop
Wörther Str. 27
Berlin - Prenzlauer Berg

German poet Sabine Scho with her translator, Bradley Schimidt
Vladimir Vertlib with his translator, David Burnett
Donna Stonecipher reading her translations of Frederike Mayröcker's poems
Joseph Given reading his translations of Michael Krüger's poems
Steph Morris reading his translation from Feridun Zaimoglu's novel "Artist for Rent"
Lucy Renner Jones reading her translation from Ronald Schernikau's "Small-Town Novella"

CrossKultur in Şöneberg

It'll be neither angry, angry, angry nor particularly crunchy, as the name might suggest – in fact, CrossKultur is an arts festival across cultures in Berlin's borough of Schöneberg (where I got German grammar drummed into me at the Hartnackschule). There's film, music, theatre, exhibitions, discussions, and all the stuff. Plus of course literature! That means readings by Emrah Serbes, Alina Bronsky – who you'll know from her English translations, no doubt, by Tim Mohr – and Urmila Goel.

And also me and Deniz Utlu, reading from his novel Die Ungehaltenen in German and English at Rathaus Schöneberg on Thursday. Exciting!

Don't Forget the Kicks

I seem to be insanely busy, but there's just time to remind you to come to this next Tuesday:

See you there!

Sorry To Bang On About David Wagner*

I feel like I'm banging my own drum rather a lot right now, but in this case it's also David Wagner's drum, so maybe it's OK. There are three new David-Wagner-in-English things to share:

Kate Müser did an interview with him for Deutsche Welle about his relationship to Berlin, and also recommends Berlin Triptych and three other great German books in English translation.

Monocle 24 Radio is airing a piece by Susan Stone about David (and Berlin, and me, and Readux Books) at 8 p.m. CET on Monday 25 August on their Culture programme. They'll repeat it a couple of times after that (find it in their schedule).

And if you're in Berlin, you lucky person you, you can catch David and me live in person at a reading on Saturday, 13 September, with Eliot Weinberger and Maren Kames, at the Circus Hostel. Here's the pretty flyer. See you there, then.

*I've just capitalized every word in the headline. Everything else looked odd and required too much consideration of grammar. I know it's not correct but I'm very tired today.

That Other Thing

So as I was saying, I want to start something new. I want to host people writing in German and people writing in English on one stage. I want to talk to them about their books and what they have in common and how they write and all those things people who write talk about on stages. And I want to bring together audiences for these two groups of writers, who I suspect are only millimetres apart. I started thinking about the way audiences in Berlin never meet when I moderated a reading by the awesome and very famous British writer David Peace at a German bookstore. The event was in English; the reading was in English and German; the audience was almost entirely German apart from a couple of my friends. We had advertised it in all the right places to let English-speakers know, and David Peace is a huge star, for fuck's sake. But for some reason, the Anglophones didn't come. It didn't matter in the end because there was a big crowd anyway. But still. And then I thought about how I rarely see English-speakers at events at the Internationales Literaturfestival, when Anglophone writers are talking but having their texts read in German translation. And then I thought about how I never see English-speakers at all-German literary events, apart from a couple of my friends. So I thought I'd like to do something to try and bring these never-the-twain-shall-meet audiences together.

Obviously my idea of an excellent literary event is modelled very closely on the old Adler & Söhne Salon, where everything was relaxed but intelligent, with shortish eclectic readings and conversations followed by longish chats between the relaxed, intelligent audience members. A kind of reach-out-and-touch atmosphere rather than the writers being whisked away afterwards and the chairs being put away to encourage the pesky audience to go home too. And because I like music, there kind of has to be a DJ for that part.

So I'm having a trial run on the 9th of September, at the very-Berlin ACUD Club on Veteranenstraße. I have two talented writers, Brittani Sonnenberg and Christiane Neudecker, and a guy called DJ Döner Summer, and I have a will to succeed. And if it works out I'll apply for funding so it can all be a little bit more professional, i.e. so people get paid. If you're in Berlin, please come. I think it'll be relaxed and intelligent and fun, and I promise not to hand out feedback forms. It's officially presented by love german books and Slow Travel Berlin, and here is our flyer and our Facebook event page. I hope to see you all there.

 

New Readux Series/Arthur Eloesser

Readux Books have announced their new series of teeny tiny literary treats. The four titles this time are Cities and City People: Berlin 1919 by Arthur Eloesser, trans. Isabel Cole, essays documenting the city on the cusp of change; Berlin Triptych by David Wagner, trans. Katy Derbyshire (that's me), more recent pieces on change in Berlin; Where the Hollyhocks Come From by Amanda Svensson, trans. Saskia Vogel, a coming-of-age story from Sweden; and Hong Kong Buffet by Brittani Sonnenberg – Americana and sweet-and-sour pork in many voices.

Lisa Schweizer designed the beautifully textured covers, and there'll be a launch party featuring all the (living) writers at the Vagabund Brauerei on 2 July. That's correct, Readux are organizing a piss-up at a brewery. Books are available to pre-order now and will be delivered from 20 June.

For a special advance treat, you can read one of Isabel's Eloesser translations at B O D Y magazine.

Tschick in English in Berlin

Please join us for a whole evening talking about the late Wolfgang Herrndorf's novel Tschick (Why We Took the Car), from 8 p.m. on Sunday, 16 February at Keule Berliner Mundart, Simon-Dach-Straße 22 in Berlin-Friedrichshain.   

It will be a discussion featuring Marcus Gärtner, Wolfgang Herrndorf's editor at Rowohlt Verlag; Tim Mohr, whose translation of "Tschick," entitled "Why We Took the Car," was just published in the US and UK; and moderated by Katy Derbyshire, Berlin-based translator and author of the blog love german books

PARTICIPANTS:

Marcus Gärtner is the Editorial Director for fiction at Rowohlt Verlag. In addition to Wolfgang Herrndorf, Gärtner has also edited Rocko Schamoni and Heinz Strunk, among others. He studied history and German literature in Konstanz and Berlin, and worked at Stiftung Weimarer Klassik and Rowohlt before becoming editorial director there in 2006.

Tim Mohr is an award-winning translator of authors such as Charlotte Roche, Alina Bronsky, Stefanie de Velasco, and Dorothea Dieckmann. He has also collaborated on memoirs by musicians Duff McKagan, Gil Scott-Heron, and Paul Stanley. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Playboy, and the Daily Beast, among other publications. Prior to starting his writing career, he worked as DJ in Berlin.

Katy Derbyshire translates contemporary German writers including Inka Parei, Clemens Meyer, Dorothee Elmiger, Simon Urban and Sibylle Lewitscharoff. She is also known internationally for her blogs http://lovegermanbooks.blogspot.de/ and http://goingdutchwithgermanwriters.wordpress.com/

REVIEWS OF TSCHICK IN ENGLISH

"With its car window on the German landscape and teen culture, the late Wolfgang Herrndorf’s novel (nimbly translated by Tim Mohr) fuels an especially expansive reading experience." - The Washington Post

"...funny, poignant, and intermittently profane and raunchy." - The Wall Street Journal

"By no means a wholesome story, 'Why We Took the Car' is exuberant and without a mean bone in its narrative." - The New York Times

"...this alternately wild, sad, hilarious, and tender tale chronicles the development of a strange and beautiful friendship." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"...sits squarely and triumphantly at the intersection of literary tall tale and coming-of-age picaresque." - Kirkus (starred review)

Gearing up for the Bachmann Prize

I've been preparing myself mentally for the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, which starts tomorrow. That means reading the short pieces by the competing writers in Volltext magazine (not online, sadly), and thinking.

Last year I was moving house and missed it all, and I did miss it. The two years before that I felt like part of the competition. I was one of a small number of people who read the texts beforehand, to translate them or to edit co-translator Stefan Tobler's translations. I knew what was coming, I had my favourites, I'd asked some of the writers questions and judged their personalities (wrongly), based on their responses. I had something to say about the competition that nobody else did. My nerdy literary friends envied me and on one occasion even came to my house in droves to watch the show with me. I wrote a live blog on the proceedings. It was exhausting. I don't want to do that again, partly because I don't feel like my insights are worth the bother without the insider perspective.

So we're going to tweet, and we're going to watch together on Saturday at Glas + Bild. Come along. By we I mean myself, Nikola Richter (Schriftstelle) and Fabian Thomas (The Daily Frown), who came up with the idea of making a special blog for the occasion, while drinking overpriced white wine at the Brecht-Haus. And then downsized the plan again to Twitter, requiring me to sign up and get sucked in. But of course I also mean all the other people who tweet about the Bachmann Prize under #tddl. Being new to the whole thing, I'm going to do it all wrong. I shall also be really annoying for anyone who has me in their feed, because I'll be posting all the fucking time about an Austrian literary competition, which is a fairly obscure thing for anyone outside the German-language literary world.

The other think I've been thinking about is the competition itself. Because of the threat to axe it, there's been a lot of discussion about whether it works, whether it's good for writers and readers, how to bring it into the 21st century, and so on. Previous winners describe their experiences in Der Standard - and they seem to have been under enormous pressure. But then they seem to have got a lot out of it in career terms. In Die Presse, Anne-Catharine Simon writes about how inhumane it all is - and especially was at the beginning under Marcel Reich-Ranicki, not a critic famed for ever being nice to anyone. All the comments raise a fundamental question about writing versus publishing, if you like. Writers write what they want to write, and I won't presume to know for whom, but then if they're lucky (or perhaps unlucky) it crosses over into the publishing world and is expected to make money, which requires calling consumers' attention to it. And the Bachmann Prize is a good way to do that. Everyone's pointing out that Ingeborg Bachmann herself was painfully shy and hated reading in public. But with so many writers now hoping to make a living from their work, they are expected to market themselves and this is one rather painful way to do so.

Drawing on this, I've been thinking about how I should behave. Nikola's pointed out that the competition organisation itself is a wee bit backward in terms of using the web. But then Angela Leinen had a great piece in Der Standard about how the web uses the Bachmann Prize, and also an article in Volltext that you can read online, about her adventures on the margins in Klagenfurt. And the key thing is that if we're going to criticise the event for exposing writers to cruel critics, albeit with the theoretical opportunity to defend themselves, then we have to be very careful indeed about criticising the writers ourselves. So it will be a challenge for a verbose person like me to comment thoughtfully and carefully in 140 characters. But I want to try it anyway. I might have to sum things up on my blog though.

In past years, I've made some great personal discoveries via the Bachmann Prize. I've translated a book first presented there, Dorothee Elmiger's Invitation to the Bold of Heart, and picked up on numerous other writers. I hope the same happens this year.

Ides of May

Today is World Book Day, which I have to admit I find a bit crap. At least in Germany, where there aren't really any free books involved. Surely all those "Yay for books" things are preaching to the converted? Whatever. Books. Yay. Let's spread the tidings of this radical new invention today.

Enough. There are some things to look forward to with a little more content, in all sorts of places. First up, the PEN World Voices festival in NYC. Austrian poetry and prose writer Barbara Frischmuth, German Book Prize winner Ursula Krechel, Swiss geezer Rolf Lappert, and all sorts of other impressive people and things from 29 April to 5 May.

From 10-12 May there's the Solothurner Literaturtage in Switzerland, where you lucky people can see me on a panel, single-handedly and hypocritically championing online reviewers. But also some proper writers, including Jenny Erpenbeck, Navid Kermani, Julya Rabinowich, Andreas Stichmann, Urs Widmer, Patrick Tschan... plus lots of translators translating live. I'm quite pleased I don't actually have to do that part.

Followed by London's European Literature Night on 15 May. Featuring Austrian writer Norbert Gstrein for your tongue-twisting delight, Germany's Birgit Vanderbeke and a host of other golden daffodils. All chaired by Rosie Goldsmith, someone I look up to immensely – and not just for her dress sense.

And if you're grounded in Berlin because it's so darn cool you can't bear to leave (I feel for you), then you can look forward to a thing called 24 Stunden Buch on 31 May and 1 June. I may be missing something but there doesn't seem to be a programme just yet. But they do tell us that (pardon my shouting): "from 12:00 to 12:00 there will be readings and other literary events around the clock, some of them in very unusual places, for children and adults. A bus transfer will link the reading locations during the evening and the night so that visitors can enjoy literature non-stop!" Now aren't you all fired up now?


Update: Argh! I just looked up World Book Night in the UK. It is not for me. Possibly in an attempt to make the list of books they give away more fitting for the event's name, they have added a translated book. Bernhard Schlink's lowest-common-denominator The Reader. Thank goodness I left the country. Yes, I know I'm a snob. 

Five Dials 26 Launched

Go to Five Dials now and download their issue number 26. It's full of goodies translated out of German. Read it, all through, and then come back here.

My head is hurting. I went back and reread this piece I wrote about how public appearances make me feel like I've been beaten and bruised. And hey, this one was better. I apologise, however, to everyone I talked to at the launch party. If I talked to you before I read I wasn't actually listening, sorry. I was wetting my pants because there seemed to be about a thousand people there, all of whom were about to judge my translation and my reading skills and my hairstyle. If I talked to you after I read I was surfing my adrenaline wave and fishing for compliments to reassure me that actually, nobody apart from the front row could tell my hands were shaking so much the words on the page went all blurry. The overwhelming impression I shall retain of the evening is one of people I didn't quite recognise, or had never met at all, knowing who I was and being very friendly while I squinted and wondered who they were and what on earth I could possibly say to them.

There was a launch party. It was very British. There were five short readings by Jan Brandt, Clare Wigfall, Judith Schalansky, Joe Dunthorne and myself (reading a top story by Tilman Rammstedt). I remember very little about them but Nikola Richter has summed it all up for you already, with photos. As has Lucy Renner-Jones, in English this time. There was drinking and chatting and socialising but sadly for the DJ, Anglo-German phenomenon Anika, no actual dancing. Thanks are due, at this point at the very latest, to my friends in the audience who whooped and screamed after my reading. It helped.

And here's one thing I hope this Five Dials issue will do: I hope it will introduce Berlin's very lively ex-pat literary scene to Germany's indigenous writers. I hope this taste of some of the great stuff happening in German will get them hooked, get them reading books in translation and possibly even in German, maybe encourage them to make more effort to speak and read the language, perhaps make the literary exchange between English and German writing less of a one-way street. Certainly that scene was out in full force last night, in all its infinite charm. 

Open Mike in Berlin

It's such a shame the name's so misleading. Berlin's Open Mike is a one-of-a-kind literary competition for writers in German under the age of 35. It's not a free-for-all of back-biting wannabes - the wannabes have to apply in advance and are picked out by a team of professional editors, then perform on stage before a huge audience, and then a team of established writers chooses the winners. Who often go on to greater things, but even the non-winners get a lot out of it, flanked as the competition itself is by workshops and activities.

It's always a pleasure to attend, albeit in a rather sado-masochistic way. After all, you have to watch the poor candidates sweating on stage, some of them reading for the first time ever in public, in a really huge space (and I've stood on the old stage myself, the audience looks truly formidable and rendered me a quivering wreck). And also you have to sit through two solid days of readings.

They've turned twenty now and are venturing into new territories with a different venue and their own blog. I like it so far. Sadly, I can't really attend but I shall keep up with events from afar.

Time for a Rant: Actors v. Translators

I forgot to say at this interview that a blog is a wonderful platform for a nice private rant. And here's one that's been brewing for a while, after we talked about it at our recent workshop: when publishers or event organisers fly a writer in for readings (mostly to Germany) and then put her on stage with an actor to read the translation - often even in the actual city where the translator lives.

I've heard similar anecdotes a number of times, and even accompanied translators to events where they sat unacknowledged in the audience while an actor read the words they wrote. Let me tell you, that's pretty humiliating. It seems that people aren't picking up on the idea of simply asking the translator whether she'd like to do that job, at least if she's going to be there anyway. Is it a communications breakdown?

My German translator friends tell me they sometimes get an email from an editor they work with saying, Hey, guess what, your author's going to be in town on Tuesday! Would you like to come along? Worse still: Hey, guess what, your author was in town last Tuesday! Why didn't you come along? Whereas what ought to be happening, in an ideal world, is that the editor informs the translator the minute they know the writer is coming over, and asks her whether she'd like to read from her translation.

German publishing houses will often have people who take care of events specifically, because readings are very important for the literary landscape here. And I'm guessing that these people may sometimes be the loose connection where things are going wrong. I don't know enough about how these things work so I'm moving on thin ice here, but my next guess is that if someone other than the publisher organises an event with a translated writer, which is very often the case, they won't have the information about the translator. And that's where I think the publisher's events people could easily step in and say, Ah, my file here says the writer's translator lives in your city! I'll send you her contact details so you can ask if she'd like to read.

Or, as a friend pointed out, authors will often have had some contact with their translator in advance. They could possibly get in touch too and ask that all-important question.

Of course not everyone's going to say yes. Some people would rather not read in front of an audience, which is fine. Or they might hate the writer's guts, in which case they probably wouldn't want to share the same space. But in many cases, a translator of a specific text has specific insights and can read that text better than an actor could. A case in point is Ingo Herzke, a Hamburg-based translator who holds readings with his writer A.L. Kennedy. In fact - as if by magic, the perfect best-practice example - he's chairing an event with her at the LCB next Thursday. And need I mention Hamburg's most famous translator, beardo extraordinaire Harry Rowohlt? A man who makes a living out of reading his translations better than anyone else possibly could? The German translators' association offers regular events helping people to train for readings. Event organisers - think of all you're missing out on!

In the other direction, i.e. when translated writers get invited to the UK, I've had some very positive experiences of being put on the podium, not only to interpret and read but also to share a couple of insights. I try not to hog the limelight too much. But of course translated literature has a very different status there than it does in Germany, where it's much less exotic.

I shall be reading in Berlin soon. I just thought I'd mention that. I was delighted to be asked.

Update: Please read the comments section for a detailed description of the event organiser's view!

Speaking of no man's land

We're launching issue #7 tonight! Everybody come along.

no man's land # 7 launch reading

with Sylvia Geist, Katharina Schultens, Lutz Seiler and Antje Rávic Strubel. November 5, 2012, 8 p.m. Saint Georges Bookshop Wörther Str. 27 Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg The bilingual launch of no man's land Issue # 7 features authors Sylvia Geist, Katharina Schultens, Lutz Seiler and Antje Rávic Strubel with their translators Catherine Hales, Bradley Schmidt and Zaia Alexander. Award-winning poet Sylvia Geist's Periodic Song reflects her background in chemistry, while her up-and-coming colleague Katharina Schultens offers a very different fusion of scientific and poetic language. Antje Rávic Strubel will read via Skype from her novel When Days Plunge Into Night, a dark love story long-listed for the German Book Prize. And Bachmann-Prize-winning Lutz Seiler will read from his latest short story collection, The Balance of Time. Issue # 7 will appear early November at www.no-mans-land.org, with fiction by Christian Helm, Johanna Hemkentokrax, Kemal Kurt, Clemens J. Setz, Thomas Stangl, Thomas von Steinaecker, Antje Rávic Strubel, Steven Uhly, and poetry by Sylvia Geist, Dagmara Kraus, Arne Rautenberg, Ulrike Almut Sandig, Katharina Schultens, Lutz Seiler, Judith Zander, and members of the g13 poetry collective. As usual, drinks will be available from the Saint Georges bar, and we hope you'll linger to chat and celebrate with us after the reading!

International Translators' Day

Breadth and Depth: A Reading for International Translators’ Day

Sunday 30 September 2012

Four Berlin-based professional wordsmiths will be reading from their recent English translations and discussing their work.

The event is kindly hosted by Shakespeare & Sons Bookstore, Raumerstraße 36, 10437 Berlin, www.shakesbooks.de.

Public transport

U-Bahn: Eberswalder Straße (U2), S-Bahn: Prenzlauer Allee, tram: M10 to Husemannstraße

Starts 7pm

Katy Derbyshire will be reading a story from All the Lights by Clemens Meyer about a refugee girl who becomes a boxer; Lucy Renner Jones will present an excerpt from the early diaries of Brigitte Reimann, which she is currently translating; Alistair Noon will read his rendering of Alexander Pushkin’s famous narrative poem The Bronze Horseman; Will Firth has chosen an extract from The Coming by Andrej Nikolaidis from Montenegro, one of the winners of the EU Prize for Literature in 2011.

Light refreshments will be available, and the three books which have already been published will be on sale.

Hope to see you there!

Dear Mely Kiyak

Mely Kiyak is a columnist for the Frankfurter Rundschau. She writes witty, caustic weekly open letters to politicians, hypocritical TV chefs, analogue satellite TV, people looking for flats in Berlin, and pretty much anyone or anything who alerts her attention or ire. She tends to be rather rude. Her column devoted to Sakineh Ashtiani won the prestigious Theodor Wolff Prize for journalism last year.

Mely Kiyak was born in Germany to Kurdish parents and took German nationality as an adult. She takes an active interest in racism and neo-fascism in Germany and often addresses the subject in her writing. As such, like many of us, she was incensed by Thilo Sarrazin's mega-selling racist book Deutschland schafft sich ab and then commented on a recent TV appearance of his to promote his latest work about how Europe doesn't need the Euro. I don't know what she wrote because she made a mistake and insulted Sarrazin in it on the subject of his lisp and stiff facial muscles, which she didn't know were lamed by an operation. She soon found out. A wave of indignation from right-wing bloggers and journalists hit her unexpectedly and the column was taken offline in an attempt to calm things down.

Her clarification came quickly:

At no point was it my intention to belittle him personally. Thilo Sarrazin appears unusual in public discussions and requires tolerance and consideration due to his language, gestures and mimicry. He himself, however, refuses this consideration and tolerance to others with regard to appearance, lifestyle, origins and disposition. What I intended was to point out his own imperfections – not due to physical factors – in his presentation; I now find that the means I used were not inadmissible. Had I known the physiological background I would not have chosen the image. I greatly regret that. 

Too late, however. As the Frankfurter Rundschau writes, the reaction has developed into a full-blown hate campaign. Kiyak and the newspaper have received hundreds of often anonymous abusive emails, calls and letters. Some of them have been passed on to the police.

I don't agree with everything Mely Kiyak has ever written. But I do think she has the right to write it without being subjected to abuse. The fact that Sarrazin's brave defenders have begun standing up for him as part of a minority - a person with a disability - while the man himself has spread numerous insults against ethnic and religious minorities would be funny if it weren't so tragic. At some point BILD demanded an apology from Kiyak. I'm wondering whether Sarrazin has apologized to all the people he's insulted over the past few years. Certainly his foreword to the paperback of his popular book claiming that immigrants are making Germany less intelligent as a whole apparently emphasizes that he's not willing to take back one word he's written. I haven't read it.

If you're in Berlin you can show your support for Mely Kiyak by attending a solidarity reading at the Ballhaus Naunynstraße this Friday evening. Writers, actors, playwrights and musicians will be reading from her columns. I shall try to attend.

Three Things To Do

Here are three interesting things to do, wherever you are:

1. If you're in Berlin, you should obviously go to the Lange Buchnacht in der Oranienstraße tomorrow. Berlin's second-coolest street plays host to zillions of readings and literary events. There are 48 different venues, for goodness' sake! It starts with stuff for kids and teens in the afternoon (including love german books favourites Zoran Drvenkar and Tamara Bach). Then you can catch a myriad of other top writers, from Nicol Ljubic to Alistair Noon to Tanja Dückers to Edgar Rai to Jan Peter Bremer to Olga Grjasnowa to Bernd Cailloux to Jakob Hein to Jan Brandt to Thomas Melle. Then there's music and dancing and performance and multimedia and discussion and all sorts of shenanigans. Or you could visit my buddies at the Videodrom-Shop for a totally rock'n'roll fanzine geezer called Gary Flanell. Don't forget to spend lots of money on DVDs, books and vinyl while you're there.
The Lange Buchnacht is *always good*. You should go if you can, and you should get yourself a beer and wander from one event to the next, or maybe pick a focus area like postmigrant culture or music writing or crime or food and go hopping to the relevant events. It's very well curated if you ask me, or perhaps that's a by-product of the fact that Oranienstraße is Berlin's second-coolest street, chock-a-block full of passionate people who care about (sub)culture.

2. If you're in London, you should sign up for this intriguing night class on free speech and translation, run by English PEN. In six Monday-night sessions, they say

...we’ll consider the politics, economics and aesthetics of literary publishing and translation. Dour detectives will meet the Arab Spring, as images, slang, poetry, and shared identity are not lost in translation. All this will be explored, with translators, editors, critics, publishers, and booksellers as special guests. 

No previous knowledge required!

3. If you're not in either of these places (or indeed if you are in London or Berlin), you should watch this long video of an event at New York's PEN World Voices festival on the subject of reviewing translations. It's always a tricky subject because translators and critics don't seem to see eye to eye (and although I've met a few critics I do see eye to eye with, I have to admit I have the same general problem). Translators want to be at least mentioned and actually valued, treated like the star of the show or at least granted an adjective on the quality of our work. Whereas reviewers often face the problems of a lack of space and a lack of confidence in judging translation quality. Or that's the upshot of the debates that took place in Germany a year or so ago. I haven't actually watched the whole of the video yet but I shall do so now and possibly post some more information a little bit later.

On Falling Asleep at Readings

Here's what happened recently: I was at a reading and it was in an enclosed space and there'd been free wine just beforehand. And I was sitting next to a woman I didn't know. And after a while she started leaning on me and I thought, Blimey, she's a bit forward, isn't she? So I sort of leaned away in the other direction. And then I noticed her head start to tip forward as her shoulders hunched over, and her breath came regularly and I realized she was asleep. And then her breathing got louder and more throaty and I could tell she was going to start snoring at any moment.

What could I do? How mortifying! I tried shifting in my seat and joggling her slightly, but that had no major effect. I could just tell that snore was coming very, very soon. And the poor writer at the front - how awful to have someone snore during your reading!

And then I started to snigger. My shoulders heaved and tears came to my eyes at the absurdity of it all. It was just too funny. I exchanged glances with the woman on the other side of my neighbour, who shrugged helplessly. I tried looking at the ceiling and concentrating on the reading - but it was no use. I had the giggles and they had to come out. And out they came - in a fantastically loud, fantastically porcine snort at a fantastically inopportune moment. Sleeping Beauty woke with a start, looking confused, while everyone else turned around to me and tutted over how rude I was to disturb the event with such a ridiculous oink. I think the words epic fail might apply.

Blushing and chastened but still unable to concentrate, I pondered the problem of falling asleep at readings. I've never done it personally but it seems to be a fairly common phenomenon at literary events in Berlin. The end of a long working day, a nice calm voice from a distance, a little relaxation juice beforehand, a warm room full of carbon dioxide...

I've actually read at an event where someone fell asleep in the front row, which made me giggle as well. But I have a theory that it's more likely to happen at German readings, for two reasons: Firstly, German readings are long. As in: two hours of reading and talking, probably at about a 50:50 ratio. When I go to English-language events I sometimes feel a bit cheated, having failed to hear half of the book read out loud. It's no wonder German audiences start to flag after a while, and it's not considered overly rude to leave in the middle. And secondly, German children are conditioned to fall asleep to the sound of voices. Not as in: their parents talking in the next room or the TV on. Oh no, German children have audiobooks. I know German adults who can only get to sleep to the sound of their old detective-story cassettes. Honestly. If you ask me it's unhealthy.

Next time I shall simply ignore the snorer. I'd advise you to do the same.