Discussion
Literatures in Exile: Mariam Meetra & Julia Cimafiejeva

Tue, 05.03.2024
8:00 PM ACUD Studio

 

What do the work, experiences and realities of authors who have had to leave their home countries due to war or political repression and now live in Berlin or Germany look like? In regular evening events in the Literatures in Exile series, two authors from different countries present their texts and discuss their experiences of exile as well as opportunities and challenges in the (German) literary scene.  

The series will be opened by the poets Mariam Meetra from Afghanistan and Julia Cimafiejeva from Belarus. Both countries represent current country focuses of the Goethe-Institut in exile. The evening will be moderated by Martin Jankowski (stadtsprachen magazin). 

The focus will be on the mediation and examination of the writers' artistic positions and works. In addition, structural questions will also be discussed, such as the connection to literary and artistic scenes, language and translation challenges or the examination of identity and artistic creation in a new environment.

Guests

© Alhierd Bacharevic

Julia Cimafiejeva (Юля Цімафеева) (born in 1982) is a Belarusian writer and translator. She is an author of four poetry collections in Belarusian and a documentary book Minsk Diary written in English. Her works have been translated into several languages and appeared in different projects, anthologies and magazines. Her recent titles in German are Der Angststein. Gedichte (edition.fotoTAPETA, 2022) and Minsk. Die Stadt, die ich vermisse. Fotografie. Gedichte (EDITIONfrölich, 2022). Cimafiejeva’s debut American book Motherfield: Poems & Belarusian Protest Diary was published in November 2022 by Deep Vellum. Together with her husband, writer Alhierd Bacharevič, she lives in exile.

© privat

Mariam Meetra, born in Baghlan, Afghanistan, in 1992, is an Afghan-German author based in Berlin. She studied Journalism in Kabul and obtained a Master's degree in Sociology at the Humboldt University of Berlin. She currently works as a researcher at the University of Leipzig, and she was the Persian literary curator for Deutsche Welle and the Beethovenfest in Bonn. The writer and women's rights activist is a member of the Afghanistan PEN. Her first poetry collection, Life on the Margin, was published in Persian in 2013 in Kabul. She has published in German in the magazine Die Horen, among others. Ich habe den Zorn des Windes gesehen is her first book of poems in German.