Centre of Words

The top-class programme brought German-speaking and international guests from theory and practice onto the stage and into conversation. Virulent topics from literature, translation and cultural policy were discussed. The thematic spectrum ranged from genre-generative AI and its far-reaching consequences to the effects of Italian politics on the cultural sector, writing in exile and the current situation of creative artists in Ukraine, positions of new Jewish narratives and the challenges of translating the works of James Baldwin, Paul Celan, James Joyce and Roberto Saviano. Poetics of the present were presented and questions were asked about writing of the future. It was about translators as scouts, the comic book market, East Asian science fiction, trends in current Italian literature and, again and again, the latest German-language prose and poetry in all its diversity.