We are thrilled to welcome the acclaimed Austrian writer Maja Haderlap together with renowned translator Tess Lewis for a bilingual poetry reading at the ACF London, presenting the poetry collection 'langer transit'. They will read and discuss selected poems in German and English, followed by a Q&A.

Maja Haderlap's work 'langer transit' continues to explore themes of her novel 'Engel des Vergessens': shifting topographies and inner topographies, Slovenian history and myths, anti-fascist resistance, language and identity.

'langer transit' is a poetry of transitions, charting the move from one country or language to another, from adolescence to adulthood, from trust and intimacy to distance, from rootedness to estrangement, but also from estrangement to a sense of community and home.

The event is moderated by Andrea Capovilla, Director of the Ingeborg Bachmann Centre for Austrian Literature & Culture at the Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies (University of London).

This reading is part of the symposium Reading Bachmann Now.

Born into the Slovenian-speaking minority of Carinthia, Austria, Maja Haderlap writes poetry, libretti and fiction in Slovenian and in German. She was awarded the 2011 Ingeborg-Bachmann-Prize and the Rauriser Literaturpreis for her novel Engel des Vergessens, published in Tess Lewis’s translation as Angel of Oblivion. Maja Haderlap was awarded the Austrian Arts Prize for Literature in 2019 and in the Christine Lavant Prize in 2021.

Tess Lewis is a writer and translator from French and German. Her translations include works by Walter Benjamin, Peter Handke, Alois Hotschnig, Julya Rabinowich, and Doron Rabinovici. She was awarded the 2017 PEN Translation Prize for Maja Haderlap’s Angel of Oblivion and a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2022, she was a Berlin Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. Her translation of Maja Haderlap’s poetry collection langer transit was published in 2022 as distant transit and is a finalist for the 2023 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.