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PEN World Voices Festival: Anna Enquist In Conversation

Thu, May 12 - Thu, May 12  2022

Pen America World Voices Festival - New York Consulate Region

Acclaimed Dutch author Anna Enquist in conversation with Louise Steinman at the PEN World Voices Festival – MAY 12

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(This event is free and can be joined virtually.)

Archives often replicate and preserve the biases of history: the narrow lenses that designate significance have led scores of famous men’s reputations to completely eclipse their partners’—even when it was these very partners who helped publicize their stories. Such was certainly the case with Captain James Cook, the seafaring explorer whose well-known journals were heavily edited by his wife Elizabeth. “A surprising and touching novel about the loss of children; about a ruined union between a man and a woman; and, above all, about the inadequacy of facts in helping to understand people” (Haarlems Dagblad) Anna Enquist’s The Homecoming depicts Elizabeth’s life in her own right and centers her in the archive outside of her husband’s ambitions. Join the award-winning Dutch author in conversation with PEN World Voices Festival curator Louise Steinman for a virtual author interview that is not to be missed.

Anna Enquist studied piano at the academy of music in The Hague and psychology at Leiden University. She is the author of the novels The MasterpieceThe Secret, winner of the 1997 Dutch Book of the Year awarded by the public; The Ice CarriersCounterpointQuartet; and the international bestseller The Homecoming, which received the Prix du Livre Corderie Royale-Hermione for its French translation. Enquist is also the author of A Leap, a collection of dramatic monologues, as well as numerous poetry collections, including Soldiers’ Songs, for which she was awarded the C. Buddingh’ Prize; A New Goodbye; and Hunting Scenes, winner of the Lucy B. and C.W. van der Hoogt Prize.

Louise Steinman is the founder—and was for 25 years the curator—of the award-winning ALOUD series at the Los Angeles Public Library. She co-directs the Los Angeles Institute of the Humanities at USC and is the author of three books: The Souvenir: A Daughter Discovers Her Father’s War (Algonquin), which chronicles her quest to return a Japanese flag her father acquired in battle during the Pacific War to its owner’s family; The Knowing Body: The Artist as Storyteller in Contemporary Performance (Shambhala), which is based on her decades-long experience as a performer/director and critic; and The Crooked Mirror: A Memoir of Polish-Jewish Reconciliation (Beacon), which was published this year in a Polish edition by Osrodek Karta (Warsaw). She received her B.A. in Literature from Reed College and her M.A. in Interdisciplinary Arts at San Francisco State University and has studied Theater/Dance at the Naropa Institute. She is the recipient of the 2019 Chora Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts from the Annenberg Foundation and several fellowships and residencies.

DutchCulture USA