European Voices: A Reading & Conversation with Austrian-Slovenian Writer Maja Haderlap and Translator Tess Lewis

Haderlap will read from her recent novel, Angel of Oblivion (Archipelago Books, August, 2016), which is based on the experiences of her family and the Slovenian-speaking minority in southern Austria, many of whom fought as partisans against the Nazis during the Second World War. The story centers on the experiences of a young girl learning to navigate the terrain between two hostile communities and two extremely burdened languages: Slovenian, a language of heroic resistance and continued humiliation, and German, an escape from her stifling rural upbringing but also the language of the camps which her grandmother barely survived and many other family members didn’t. Maja Haderlap was born in Eisenkappel, Austria, and studied theatre and German at the University of Vienna. From 1992 to 2007 she was head of dramaturgy at the Municipal Theatre of Klagenfurt, and she continues to hold annual dramaturgy classes in Klagenfurt. Tess Lewis’ translations from French and German include works by Maja Haderlap, Peter Handke, Alois Hotschnig, Melinda Nadj Abonji, Philippe Jaccottet, and the painter Anselm Kiefer. Her recent awards include a Max Geilinger Award, the Austrian Cultural Forum NY Translation Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Free & Open to the Public | Reception and Book-signing to follow This year's European Voices events are organized in collaboration with the literary journal AGNI and the Goethe-Institut Boston and are taking place as part of EU Futures, a series of conversations exploring the emerging future in Europe. The EU Futures project is supported by a Getting to Know Europe Grant from the European Commission Delegation in Washington, DC to the Center for the Study of Europe at Boston University.