European Literature Night 2022: To be in a time of war

These days, writers in Europe are writers in times of war. To many, this was unimaginable up until the morning of 24 February. To others, this has been a scenario that has loomed large over the continent already for a long time; again to others, like the poet Etel Adnan from whom we borrowed the title of this year’s edition of the European Literature Night, war has been an almost continues given.

For the 2022 edition of the European Literature Night, we are inviting writers to think about the effect of the war in Ukraine on Europe’s past and future. How can writers speak up? How can the literary imagination create understanding and insight into the history that has led to this war? Have we been naïve or even blind, taking our security, freedom and rule of law for granted? Is our past still the same, or should we revisit it, and reconsider its fundamental lessons? And what are the lessons for the future?

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Heerma van Voss is a Dutch author and essayist. He published the novels Stern and Condities (longlist Boekenbon Literatuurprijs and Libris Literatuurprijs). He also writes essays, articles and short stories. In the spring of 2022, his collection of short stories Passengers / Achterblijvers was published.

Freixas is a Spanish novelist, short story writer and columnist. Freixas is one of the most significant feminist voices in Spain. Her interest in gender is a longstanding one and she edited and wrote the prologue for the important anthology of female-authored short stories, Madres e hijas (1996).

Kramberger is a Slovenian writer and journalist. Her book Heaven in a blackberry bush: a novel in stories won the EU Prize for Literature in 2010. In 2009, she founded the eco-art collective Green Central, where she promotes ecology and art. She lives in Berlin and travels frequently.

Grigorcea is a Swiss-Romanian writer. Her most recent novel Die nicht sterben (2021) received the Swiss Prize for Literature and was nominated for the German Book Prize. She also writes columns for Die Zeit and Deutsche Welle and is active in advocating for a free and democratic Europe.

Srbová is a Czech poet and journalist. She currently contributes to the fortnightly literary journal Tvar. She has published the poetry collections Někdo se loudá po psím (Someone is Hanging Around like a Dog, 2011), Světlo vprostřed těla (The Light in the Centre of the Body, 2013), Les (Forest, 2016) and Svět: (The World, 2019).

Raud is an Estonian scholar and author. Raud has published five collections of poetry, seven novels and several collections of short stories and plays, including The Reconstruction (2012) and Vend (2008).

Petrowskaja, born in Kyiv in 1970, has lived in Berlin since 1999. She studied literature in Tartu, Stanford and Moscow and works as a journalist for German and Russian-language media. Her literary debut Maybe Esther (2014) has been translated into over 30 languages ​​and has received numerous awards. She lives in Tbilisi and Berlin.

The European Literature Night 2022 is a collaboration between Tsjechisch Centrum Rotterdam, Goethe-Institut Niederlande, the Austrian Embassy The Hague, the Embassy of Estonia in the Hague, Instituto Cervantes Utrecht, Republic of Slovenia Embassy The Hague, the Embassy of Switzerland in the Netherlands, the Embassy of Spain in The Hague, the Romanian Cultural Institute Brussels, the Embassy of Romania in the Kingdom of the Netherlands and DutchCulture.