Come Together: The 12th Annual New Literature from Europe Festival

Now in its 12th year, the New Literature from Europe Festival, presents twelve extraordinary authors from across the Continent including: Wojciech Jagielski (Poland), Bernhard Aichner (Austria), Naja Marie Aidt (Denmark), Niccolò Ammaniti (Italy), Tomáš Halík (Czech Republic), Josefine Klougart (Denmark), Alek Popov (Bulgaria), Jordi Puntí (Catalan), György Spiró (Hungary), Bogdan Suceava (Romania), Bettina Suleiman (Germany), and Ardian Vehbiu (Albania).

“Pushed by civil war and violence, hundreds of thousands of people have fled the Middle East and Africa in the largest refugee crisis Europe has seen since World War II. Never before have the voices of European writers been more imperative than today,” says Sean Bye, President New Literature from Europe Festival, 2015.

Hailed by Ryszard Kapuscinski as the Polish writer who best continued his work into the next generation, Wojeciech Jagielski will be celebrating the launch of his third book in English: Burning the Grass: At the Heart of Change in South Africa, 1990-2011. A literary masterpiece of true crime, the book is based on the 2010 murder of Eugène Terre'Blanche, the firebrand far-right terrorist who espoused white Afrikaner rule even as it was ending in South Africa. Jagielski travels to the small town where Terre'Blanche lived until his mysterious killing, and shows us a part of South Africa where life and views have changed little since the introduction of democracy in 1994.

Other Festival highlights include dynamic programming such as Templeton Prize winner Tomáš Halík in conversation with Erasmus Prize-winning journalist, Ian Buruma, at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, a Bernardo Bertolucci film screening with Niccolò Ammaniti, author of the novel on which the film was based and winner of the Premio Strega with Antonio Monda, Artistic Director of the Rome Film Festival at NYU’s Casa Italia, a conversation on the challenges women authors face being translated into English with Naja Marie Aidt, Josefine Klougart and Bettina Suleiman with 3%’s Chad Post, moderated by Margaret Carson, co-chair of the PEN Translation Committee, and the first ever NLE Translation Slam featuring NLE, poets, novelists and playwrights and their translators. For a full schedule of festival events, visit the New Literature from Europe festival website www.newlitfromeurope.org

The New Literature from Europe festival is jointly organized by the European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC), The Albanian Ministry of Culture, the Albanian Institute New York, the Austrian Cultural Forum New York, the Balassi Institute, the Consulate General of Denmark, Czech Center New York, the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation, the Goethe-Institut New York, the Institut Ramon Llull, the Italian Cultural Institute New York, the Polish Cultural Institute New York, and the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York.

For more information and the full schedule of events, please visit

http://www.newlitfromeurope.org