Looking back at the 2021 Neustadt Lit Festival, featuring NSK Laureate Cynthia Leitich Smith and the announcement of the 2022 Neustadt Laureate, Senegal’s Boubacar Boris Diop.
Monica Brown served on the jury that chose the 2021 NSK Prize winner and successfully championed Cynthia Leitich Smith as her nominee. On the final day of the 2021 Neustadt Lit Fest, she delivered the following tribute.
Cynthia Leitich Smith’s keynote address for the 2021 Neustadt Festival.
“In the morning I ate more pies, chicken, / Tried watching TV, like when I was a kid. / Then mum and dad started packing that kid a food bag: / Half a bucket of potatoes, beetroot, carrots, jam – all home-grown. / And off I went,” from “[Untitled],” by Ekaterina Simonova (trans. by Robin Munby)
“The word gave me the key to the world / I learned to climb to the sky / Without drawing the shores / From which the sheep I imagine / Drown themselves in the sea,” from “On the Hilltop,” by Tanella Boni (trans. by Todd Fredson)
“Zealously I have heard how your mouth can make the world be born again, / how it names with precision what had seemed to me but the awkward stirring of some / bewildered butterfly,” from “Poem with Citation,” by Piedad Bonnett (trans. by Yvette Siegert)
In a dimly lit crypt, a woman loses her way and finds her thoughts toggling between a mysterious man in the dark tunnel and a childhood friend.
A family’s history, Soviet history, and the role of a father’s stamp collection.
The following tales were recounted and shared collectively by a group of women who wish to be identified by name: Agnes Kaunda Chiwamine, Rosemary Mushota, Scolastica Kalengule Chiwamine, Exildah Mwansa Musoka, and Sarah Mweba.
Eager to emerge from isolation and encounter art and (safely) others, a writer in Florida takes in Van Gogh Alive at the Dalí Museum and finds a “strange beast” aspiring to be “a form of edutainment, geared for an impatient, digital age, accustomed to overstimulation.”
Multiethnic fiction speaks volumes about Chinese attitudes toward minorities, as well as these peoples’ historical understandings, their search for roots, and longings for cultural survival.
Harnessing the colonizers’ languages, as well as elevating the national lingua franca Bislama, writers are tackling the complex issue of ensuring contemporary fiction, poetry, and historical narratives of Vanuatu contain women’s perspectives too.
Filippo Menozzi interviews Henrietta Rose-Innes, a South African author of two short-story collections and four novels, including Nineveh and Green Lion.
Sarah Moore interviews multitalented French writer Noémi Lefebvre. “You can’t be afraid of yourself when writing, but at the same time you need to be afraid because writing reveals who you really are.” - Noémi Lefebvre
Keija Parssinen interviews Isabella Hammad, author of The Parisian, a book that “luxuriates in language and radiates intelligence.”
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