Menschen, Tiere, Landschaften

Three European poets and one Australian author with a very lyrical novel. For each of them, animals play a leading role, although in different ways.

Roperta Dapunt writes in Italian and Ladin. She adopts the viewpoint of a woman who lives on a farm and with people and animals. Vulnerability, illness and death are put into verses that are characterized by respect, the connection to nature and the search for language.

Animals as working animals: Kinga Tóth addresses taboos in her poems and condemns intolerable conditions. Her artistic work is often multidisciplinary – her poems are also sustained by text and sound, while others are illustrated by her drawings.

Nothing disappears, nothing dies – this insight is the background to Tara June Winch’s narration in her novel Wie rote Erde of a family epic in which the exploitation of land and culture, of people and animals influences the life of generations of Aborigines. In an impressive way the protagonist of the novel compiles a dictionary to preserve the language of his people – hence, he weaves a tapestry of memories, secrets, landscape descriptions, and the past comes alive.

The search for happiness is a leitmotif in the new novel by Christina Walker with the programmatic title Kleine Schule des Fliegens. Every day crows flock outside the window of a man during his convalescence from chemotherapy. What does that mean? With great humour, Walker narrates the story of assimilation between man and animal, a story of abysses and passions for which the proper allies are required to conquer them.

***BIOGRAPHIES***

Kinga Tóth
b. 1983, is a Hungarian linguist, visual and sound poet, illustrator and culture manager as well as the founder of an agency for equality and women’s representation in the literary trade in Hungary. She writes in Hungarian, German and English. Recently published in German: Party, 2019. Mondgesichter, 2022.

The illustrated collection “Party” is based on children’s rhymes that Kinga Tóth adopts by distorting and inverting them. A recurring element in this is the reference to the animal world, especially to working animals in agriculture.
parasitenpresse

Roberta Dapunt
Roberta Dapunt, born 1970 in Abtei/Badia (Italy), where she lives. She writes in Italian and Ladin. Publications in magazines and anthologies. In German by Folio: Nauz (2012/2019), Dies mehr als paradies (2016), die krankheit wunder (2020) and Synkope/Sincope (2021). For Sincope she received the prestigious Premio Letterario Internazionale Viareggio Rèpaci per la Poesia 2018.

Respect, the bond with nature and the will to survive speak from Dapunt’s verses.
Der Standard

Tara June Winch
Tara June Winch, b. 1983, is a writer who lives in France. She belongs to the Wiradjuri Aboriginal group and has won numerous awards in her native Australia. Her novel The Yield was a bestseller and was translated into German: Wie rote Erde, 2023.

Raw and tender passages, subjective sensations and (cultural)historical facts, landscape descriptions and emotional moods in Tara June Winch’s novel are artfully and finely stitched together like a possum’s fur that the Wiradjuri use for making their coats.
Carsten Hueck, Deutschlandfunk

Christina Walker (Augsburg)
born 1971, is an Austrian writer. After many years working in theatre, film and museums in Vienna and Berlin, she now lives in Augsburg. She was awarded, among others, the Swabian Literature Prize. Recently published: Kleine Schule des Fliegens, 2023.

Succinct and with a subtle dose of humour, Walker deals with the voids of existence, which cannot be filled by the social milieu. The mixture of interpretability and openness guarantees literary concentration. 
Wiener Zeitung