Literature Festival: Esther Kinsky at the New Literature From Europe Festival

The New Literature from Europe Festival (NLE), New York City’s top European literary event, will bring to the city leading and emerging voices from 14 countries in dialogue with some of today’s foremost authors, editors and translators. For its 14th installment, NLE will celebrate cultural diversity and heritage while addressing the current challenges of globalization and migration. Come hear important new voices in translation, discover new ones not yet known on this shore, and engage in a vital cross-cultural exchange for better understanding and kinship among cultures.

The Goethe-Institut’s guest this year is acclaimed German writer Esther Kinsky. She will participate in the following three panels at Instituto Cervantes:

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 8:10-9:25PM
MIGRATION: BRIDGING THE GAPS

A panel discussion with Theodora Bauer, Adrian Grima, Esther Kinsky, Bruno Vieira Amaral, moderated by Nermeen Shaikh (Democracy Now!).
Can narratives of past migration help us to reframe some of today’s polarizing issues around migration and globalization?

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 6:00-6:35PM
ESTHER KINSKY’S RIVER

Esther Kinsky will discuss her latest novel River, recently published in an English translation by Iain Galbraith for Transit Books, with translator Tess Lewis.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 8:10-9:25PM
AFFLICTED BODIES AND DISTURBED LANDS: A POETIC APPROACH 

A panel discussion with Jacek Dehnel, Esther Kinsky, Luna Miguel, Ursula Andkjær Olsen, moderated by TBC
Four exciting poets from different countries and generations explore bodies and lands as sites in which the personal and the political are vividly, and sometimes brutally, inscribed.

Esther Kinsky grew up by the river Rhine and lived in London for twelve years. She is the author of five volumes of poetry and four novels and is the German translator of notable English and Polish authors (including Henry David Thoreau and Miron Bialoszewski). River won the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize (2016), the Franz Hessel Prize (2014), the Kranichsteiner Literature Prize (2015) and the SWR Prize for the best fiction book (2015), and was longlisted for the German Book Prize (2014). It was published in the US by Transit Books (2018, translation by Iain Galbraith). Kinsky’s latest novel, Hain, won the Leipzig Book Fair Prize for Fiction (2018).

Tess Lewis is a writer and translator from French and German. Her translations include works by Peter Handke, Alois Hotschnig, Klaus Merz, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Christine Angot, Pascal Bruckner and Jean-Luc Benoziglio. She has been awarded grants from PEN USA, PEN UK, and the NEA, a Max Geilinger Translation Grant for her translation of Philippe Jaccottet, the ACFNY Translation Prize and the 2017 PEN Translation Prize for her translation of the novel Angel of Oblivion by the Austrian writer Maja Haderlap, and most recently a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. She is Co-chair of the PEN Translation Committee and Advisory Editor for The Hudson Review.

Please visit the Festival website for the full program.

The NLE Festival is jointly organized by the European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC) and New York-based European cultural institutes.