Festival launch

Th 12 October, 7pm, replugged vienna, free

Th 12 October, 7.30pm, replugged vienna, free
How do you write Vienna?
Over the winter months Vienna Lit encouraged people who have come to Vienna from a different cultural background to write about their experiences and their relationship with the city and the Viennese. We have collected the best of these original prose and poetry contributions in English for our anthology Vienna Views, which demonstrate views of Vienna that throw a new light on the city and challenge what Austrians are perhaps taking for granted.
Literaturverlag °LUFTSCHACHT.

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Th 12 October, 8.30pm, replugged vienna, with Chris Cummins, FM4
After her teenage son Kevin kills eight schoolmates and a teacher, Eva Khatchadourian desperately tries to comprehend the incomprehensible. Shriver’s devastating novel takes us on a journey through Kevin’s childhood, tackling the fundamental question of nature or nurture and analysing the complex ways in which human beings relate to each other, or don’t. The author will be reading selected passages.
Listen to the author talk about her novel.
 
Lionel Shriver is the author of seven novels including The Female of the Species, Ordinary Decent Criminals, A Perfectly Good Family and Game Control. Her latest novel We Need to Talk About Kevin won the Orange Prize for Fiction 2005. Lionel Shriver was born in the US and has lived in Nairobi, Bangkok and Belfast. She currently lives in London.

 
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Th 12 October, 9.15pm, replugged vienna
LABYRINTH, the Association of English-Language Poets in Vienna, presents a poetic pursuit of the little treasures glimpsed upon a journey through the maze of streets and buildings that moulds our experience of the inner and outer city. Multi-vocal poetry performance plus music.
 
Founded in 1993, Labyrinth is a Vienna-based poetry group working primarily with the English language in a foreign-language environment. Labyrinth poets read, write, perform and publish both individually and collectively, with the aim of exploring and enhancing the perception and expression of the varieties of poetic experience. http://labyrinth.mediaweb.at

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Fr 13 October, 7pm, replugged vienna, with Chris Cummins, FM4
Jonathan Carroll will be reading for the first time from his latest novel, The Ghost in Love, currently a work in progress. The reading promises something completely different and unconnected from Carroll’s previous work as a fantasy and horror writer, making it a much anticipated event. (© Rebecca Bakken)
 
Carroll is the author of numerous acclaimed novels including: Outside the Dog Museum (1991, British Fantasy Society Best Novel winner) and The Panic Hand (1995, Bram Stoker Best Collection winner). The first chapter of The Ghost in Love will be appearing in the 25th anniversary issue of the American contemporary literature journal, Conjunctions. Carroll was born in New York and now lives in Vienna.
 
For Berlitz Club members this event is free.

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Fr 13 October, 8pm, replugged vienna, with Chris Cummins, FM4
The Calypso rhythms, hip hop and jazz influences of Anthony Joseph’s performance should not be missed. He will be reading from his first novel, The African Origins of UFOs to be published in October 2006. The novel is a thriller in poetic verse form that contains elements of science fiction, surrealism, history and mythology.
 
Born in Trinidad, Anthony Joseph is a poet, musician and lecturer. Since childhood he has been fascinated by words and their connection with music. Author of two poetry collections, Desafinado (1994) and Teragaton (1997), in 2004, he was selected by the Arts Council of England for his major contribution to contemporary British literature.

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Fr 13 October, 8.45pm, replugged vienna
Camilo Antonio curates an unusual collection of readings based around dialogues between Mozart, Sigmund Freud, and Karl Kraus on a myriad of subjects that include the enigmatic Afro-American dancer Josephine Baker.
 
Urbannomadmixes is a group of migrant-expat-native performance artists exploring the theme Vienna Faultlines through poetry. This idea describes how people can either be drawn to or repelled by one another in a city that is simultaneously obsessed with the past, yet determined to be modern.

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Fr 13 October, 9.30pm, replugged vienna
Calling all budding writers: this is the opportunity to share your work and encourage the rest of us to have a go. Please come and read your English poems/stories/musings aloud.

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Sat 14 October, 7pm, replugged vienna, with Chris Cummins, FM4
Hannelore Tik is a perfect example of where persistence and a passion for writing can take you. Having successfully self-published the book, Discovering Vienna through Legends in the year 2000, she will be reading from a selection of well-known Viennese tales, many of which are still popular today.
 
Born in Bavaria, Tik moved to Vienna in 1946. As a bookseller in the British Bookshop where she worked for 15 years, Tik decided that as a book on Viennese legends had not been published in English, she would do it herself. Encouraged by her initial success, she has written a further book on legends of Austria which should be ready for publication by the end of 2006.

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Sat 14 October, 7.45pm, replugged vienna
Reading from a selection of his poems on politics, race, childhood, and love, John Siddique will show that poetry can be noisy, humorous and sexy, and viewed in the simplest of things.
 
Siddique started writing by accident in his late twenties. Previously he had taken no interest in poetry or the creative arts, but the discovery of James Joyce’s Ulyssees opened his mind to the technique of free writing. Siddique’s work includes ‘The Prize’ (Rialto, 2005), ‘Poems from a Northern Soul’ (Crocus Books, 2006), and he is co-author of ‘Four Fathers’ (Route, 2006).

Only 18 years old and not yet published, Jay Bernard’s arresting performance should be an inspiration to those of us who still have not managed to put pen to paper.
 
Bernard is both a page and performance poet. She has appeared in Poetry London, The Guardian and The Independent, and performed on Radio 4’s ‘The Green Room’ and Radio 3’s ‘The Verb’ as well as on The Culture Show. She won the London Respect Slam in 2004 and the Foyle’s Young Poetry competition in 2005. Bernard lives and studies in London.

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Sat 14 October, 8.30pm, replugged vienna, with Barbara Treptow
John Siddique’s poem ‘YES’ is the starting point for a poetry competition that Vienna Lit is organising for secondary school pupils in Vienna. We are collecting ‘NO’ poems, the most interesting of which will be performed by their authors at the festival. Come and find out who will be the Vienna Lit School Slam Champion 2006!
 
(Entries accepted until 30 September, for details see www.viennalit.at/schoolslam2006.html).

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Sat 14 October, 9.30pm, replugged vienna
For an experience certain to please both literary and musical audiences, The Fugitives will combine story- telling and poetry with music and song. Currently on their fourth European tour, festival-goers are starting to compare their flair for performance to the likes of Allen Ginsberg and Ken Kesey.
 
From Canada, the Fugitives comprise four members who are all award-winning poets, multi-instrumentalists, singer/songwriters, and storytellers. Featuring Canada's spoken-word champion and the world's second highest ranked SLAM poet, this young group has already taken their unique literary mix all over the world.

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Mon 16 October, 7.30pm, The Fundus, International Theatre Vienna, €4
The event’s theme is ‘The best of modern literary fiction’: actors from the International Theatre will stage dramatic readings from the works of Ali Smith, Jonathan Safran Foer and others. A wonderful opportunity to sample the writings of some of today’s most interesting authors. Not to be missed!

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