6. 5. /18.30/ Divadlo Na Prádle
7. 5. /17.00/ Literární sál
8. 5. / 17.00 / Velký sál

Neal Ascherson was born in Edinburgh in 1932. As a reporter for the UK’s Observer, he covered Asia, Africa, and Central Europe, focusing on Poland and the 1968 Prague Spring. Later The Observer began running his celebrated weekly column.
Ascherson’s books include The King Incorported (2001), Games with Shadows (1989), The Polish August (1982), Black Sea (1995), and Stone Voices (2003).
Neal Ascherson is one of Britain’s finest writers in an undefinable genre that fuses history, memoir, and politics with meditations on places.
His books on Poland were deeply influential to writers of the time, as were his collected essays on the strange Britain to which he returned in the mid-1980s. Black Sea won international acclaim and several literary prizes, including the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year and the PEN Silver Pen Award in 1996.

4. 5. / 18.00 / Židovské muzeum
8. 5. / 13.00 / stánek L 406

Ruth Bondyová was born in Prague in 1923. The Nazi occupation forced her to leave the school of economics her parents wished her to attend. S
he was later deported to the Terezín ghetto and spent the rest of the war imprisoned in various concentration camps. By the end of the year 1948 she joined a brigade of Czechoslovak volunteers leaving for the newly established State of Israel, to help fight for its independence.
She settled in Israel for good and became a renowned journalist, columnist, and translator of Czech
literature. She has introduced Israeli readers to, among others, Hašek, Čapek, but also Fuks, Hrabal or Kundera. She is the author of several biographies (on the Terezín Jewish elder J. Edelstein, Israeli minister of finance P. Rozen, remarkable resistance fighter E. Sereni, Doctor Ch. Šiba). Her collected newspaper columns have been published as a book. Her most recent contribution to Czech literature is her autobiographical book Víc štěstí než rozumu (Lucky, I Guess), Argo 2004.

7. 5. / 11.00 / Literární kavárna
7. 5. /17.00 / Komorní sál
8. 5. / 19.00 / Divadlo Na Prádle


Pat Boran is an Irish writer, poet, critic, and the programme director of the Dublin Writers’ Festival. Born in Portlaoise in 1963, Boran has published four collections of poetry.
His first collection, The Unwound Clock, won the 1989 Patrick Kavanagh Award; he later wrote Familiar Things (1993), The Shape of Water (1996), and As the Hand, the Glove (2001). Boran’s first short fiction book for children, All the Way from China, appeared in 1998 and was shortlisted for the Bisto Book of the Year Award.
Boran’s non-fiction work includes The Portable Creative Writing Workshop (1999), which offers hands-on writing guidance, and A Short History of Dublin (2000). He regularly reviews new publications for a number of literary journals
and newspapers. Boran conducts creative writing workshops throughout Ireland in schools, colleges, and prisons, teaching writers of all ages and levels.

6. 5. /15.00 / Komorní sál
6. 5. /18.30 / Divadlo Na Prádle
8. 5. / 19.00 / Divadlo Na Prádle

Ron Butlin was born in 1949 in Edinburgh, Scotland and was educated at the University of Edinburgh. Before taking up writing full-time he was, at various times, a lyricist with a pop band, a barnacle scraper on Thames barges, a footman attending embassies and country houses, and a male
model. A poet, prosewriter, and author of radio plays, his work has won several Scottish Arts Council Book Awards and has been translated into over a dozen languages.
Butlin is the author of two novels, The Sound of My Voice (1987, reissued 2002) and Night Visits (1997). He was awarded a Scottish Arts Council Book Award for his first collection of stories, The Tilting Room (1983), and for Ragtime in Unfamiliar Bars (1985), a collection of poetry. Two collections of Butlin's short stories are forthcoming:
Vivaldi and the Number 3 (in 2004) and No More Angels.

7. 5. / 11.00 / Literární kavárna
8. 5. / 19.00 / Divadlo Na Prádle

Moya Cannon was born in Dunfanaghy, County Donegal, in 1956. She studied history and politics at University College Dublin and at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. In 1995 she served as editor of The Poetry Ireland Review. Her first collection of poetry, Oar (1990), won the Brendan Behan Memorial Prize. Her second collection, The Parchment Boat, was
published by Gallery Press in 1997.
Says author Deirdre Cartmill, “Moya almost revels in the fact that man is at the mercy of nature, that life is so „unspeakably fragile” and “we are so unexpectedly mortal” …. The lyrical beauty of her poetry brings you close
enough to taste this savagery.’
Her work has been widely anthologised, and the composers Jane O'Leary, Philip Martin, and Ellen Crannitch have set several of her poems to music. She is a member of Aosdána, the select affiliation of creative artists in Ireland.

7. 5. / 15.00 / Komorní sál
7. 5. / 18.30 / Divadlo Na Prádle
8. 5. / 12.00 / Komorní sál

Michael Collins was born in Limerick, Ireland in 1964. He received his Ph. D. from the University of Illinois, Chicago, and now lives in Seattle. He is the author of the short story collections The Feminists Go Swimming
(1996) and The Meat Eaters (1999), as well as the novels The Life and Times of a Teaboy (1995) and Emerald Underground (1998).
His fiction has received international critical acclaim and has been translated into numerous languages. His first book, The Man Who Dreamt of Lobsters, was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 1993. The Keepers of Truth (2001) won the Book of the Year Award for Best Irish Novel and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and for the IMPAC Dublin Prize. The Resurrectionists (2002) is an absorbing mystery praised by The Observer for its “rhythmic prose of biblical density with long, cadenced sentences.” His latest, Lost Souls (2003), has been nominated for the Best Irish Book of the Year.

7. 5. /11.00 / Literární kavárna
7. 5. /17.00 / Komorní sál
8. 5. / 14.00 / Komorní sál
8. 5. / 19.00 / Divadlo Na Prádle

John F. Deane was born on Achill Island, County Mayo, in 1943.
He is the founding and current editor of The Dedalus Press, an “outward-looking” press that publishes new Irish poetry and poetry in translation from around the world. In 1978 he founded the national organisation Poetry Ireland, which is dedicated to developing, supporting, and promoting poetry throughout Ireland. Many of his poems have been translated into other languages such as Danish, French, Portuguese, Flemish, and Serbo-Croatian.
His poetry collections include Stalking After Time (1977), Winter in Meath (1984), Walking on Water (1994), and most recently, Manhandling the Deity (2003). He has published two short story collections and three novels: One Man's Place (1994), Flightlines (1996), and Undertow (2002). He has also translated books from Romanian, Swedish, and French into English. Deane won the O'Shaughnessy Award for Irish Poetry in 1998 and the Grand International Prize for Poetry in 2000. He lives in Dublin.

8. 5. / 17.00 / Komorní sál

Inger Edelfeldt (*1956) is an autodidact. Writer for both adults and children, she is also a popular illustrator of, among other, books by J. R. R. Tolkien.
Besides novels – of which Duktig pojke! (That's the Boy!; 1977), about the maturing of a homosexual boy, is perhaps the most notable – and short story collections, she has also written and illustrated two comic books: Den kvinnliga mystiken (The Mystique of a Woman; 1988) and Hondjuret (The
Female; 1989), both focusing on feminine topics. In her novels she attempts to bring to light the deep antagonisms hiding under the seemingly banal surface of the everyday life.
In the 1990s she has received a number of Swedish and foreign literary prizes. Her short story The Spooks (Spöken) was published in the anthology Ve skutečnosti je díra (There's a Hole in Reality) (One Woman Press, 2003).

7. 5. /11.00 / Literární kavárna
7. 5. /17.00 / Komorní sál
8. 5. / 14.00 / Komorní sál
8. 5. / 19.00 / Divadlo Na Prádle

Peter Fallon is a poet, editor, and publisher.
He was born in Germany in 1951 and grew up near Kells, County Meath, where he now lives. He founded The Gallery Press, considered an eminent publishing house today, at the age of eighteen. The Gallery Press has published more than 300 books of poems and plays by Ireland's foremost writers, including several collections of Fallon’s own poetry: The Speaking Stones (1978), Winter Work (1983), The News and Weather (1987), Eye to Eye (1992), and The Deerfield Series:
Strength of Heart (1997). In 1993 Fallon received the O'Shaughnessy Poetry Award from the Irish-American Cultural Institute. He has given more than two hundred readings throughout the USA, Europe, Canada, Japan, and Ireland.

3. 5. / 11.00 / Filozofická fakulta UK

Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg (born in Turin in 1939) is one of the living classics of modern history.
Having graduated in Pisa in the early 1960s, he became professor of modern history at the University of Bologna as early as 1970. Since 1988 he is a lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Among other achievements, he is widely recognised for his book Sýr a červi (The Cheese and the Worms), in which he employs microhistorical approaches to analyse the world of thought of a miller – simple and yet original thinker – accused of heresy and investigated by the Inquisition.
Other of Ginzburg's highly acclaimed books, Benadanti (Night Battles), is a reconstruction of the thought processes of Friulian peasants, engaging in symbolic battles against witches for the fertility of their fields.
The confrontation of the folk culture with the scholarly culture of the inquisitors, which many of the benandanti had to face, has to a large extent influenced the present day picture of the witches' Sabbath.
This particular topic is central to another book by Ginzburg, the third published in Czech – Noční příběh (The Night Story), Argo.
Here the author explores the roots of the general understanding of the Sabbath throughout Europe, focuses on ethnological and folkloristic phenomena that shed some unexpected light on the issue, and studies the causes of the mass persecution of selected groups of Europe's
inhabitants – especially the lepers and the Jews – which has preceded the infamous witch hunts, coming to the fore with the advent of modern times.

6. 5. / 15.00 / Komorní sál
7. 5. / 18.30 / Divadlo Na Prádle
8. 5. / 14.00 / stánek S 201

Kirsty Gunn was born in 1960 in New Zealand. She was educated at Queen Margaret College; Victoria University, Wellington; and Oxford. After moving to London she worked as a freelance journalist. Her fiction includes the acclaimed Rain (1994), the story of an adolescent girl and the breakup of her family, for which she won a London Arts Board Literature Award; this award enabled Gunn to write full-time. Her second novel, The Keepsake (1997), is the fragmented narrative of a young woman recalling painful memories. Her newest novel, Featherstone (2002), is a story concerned with love in all its variety. Gunn's short stories have been included in many anthologies.
She is also the author of This Place You Return to Is Home (1999), a collection of short stories, and in 2001 she was awarded a Scottish Arts Council Writer's Bursary. Kirsty Gunn lives in Edinburgh with her Scottish husband David Graham.

7. 5. / 15.00 / Komorní sál
7. 5. / 18.30 / Divadlo Na Prádle

The Dublin-born writer Hugo Hamilton grew up speaking Irish and German, wearing lederhosen and Aran sweaters. His best-selling memoir The Speckled People (2003) tells the story of his remarkable childhood in the 1950s.
It has already been translated into many languages, and is being made into a film. Hamilton is the author of four other novels and a collection of short stories. Three of his novels are set in Germany, where the characters explore the ongoing effects of the war and the Berlin wall.
The best-known of these is The Last Shot (1991). His subsequent novels set in Ireland, such as Sad Bastard (1998), explore the enormous contemporary changes that have swept his own city. Hugo Hamilton has taught creative writing courses at many leading universities around Europe, including Trinity College in Dublin and York University in England. He now lives in Dublin.

7. 5. / 18.30 / Divadlo Na Prádle
8. 5. / 15.00 / Komorní sál

Tristan Hughes was born in Atikokan, Canada, where he lived for two years before moving to Ynys Mon, an island off the coast of north Wales. He was educated at the Welsh-language Ysgol David Hughes, Menai Bridge, and went on to study literature at the universities of York and Edinburgh,
and at King’s College, Cambridge. He has taught courses on American literature and culture in Cambridge, Taiwan, and Bangor in Wales.
The Tower, Hughes’ first book, is set on Ynys Mon and explores the relationships between people and place. Taking a motley collection of characters he dramatises the emotional, historical, and psychological bonds between these people and the landscape that they physically and imaginatively inhabit. He is currently at work on a second novel, The Strange Journeying of Johnny Ifor Jones, to be published in 2005.

6. 5. /18.30/ Divadlo Na Prádle
7. 5. /17.00/ Literární sál
8. 5. / 15.00 / Komorní sál

Emyr Humphreys, born in 1919 in Prestatyn, north Wales, is one of the foremost Welsh novelists writing in English.
He is the author of over twenty novels, of short story volumes, verse, and non-fiction work, and was described
by the poet R. S. Thomas as “the supreme interpreter of Welsh life in English”.
In the mid-fifties, he joined BBC Wales as a drama producer before taking a lectureship in Drama at the University of Wales, Bangor. He enjoyed remarkable success as a young novelist, winning the Somerset Maugham Award for Hear and Forgive (1952) and the Hawthornden Prize for A Toy Epic (1958), his most famous novel, written in both Welsh and English. In 1972, he embarked on a career as a full-time writer.
His latest volume, Old People Are a Problem (2002), is a collection of short stories which explore the experience
of growing old at the beginning of the 21st century.

6. 5. /18.30/ Divadlo Na Prádle
7. 5. /17.00/ Literární sál
8. 5. / 15.00 / Komorní sál

Stanislava Chrobáková Repar, born in 1960 in Bratislava, is a Slovak poet, prose-writer, essayist, critic, and translator. She has a degree in philosophy and aesthetics and a doctorate in contemporary Slovak poetry.
She worked as research scholar at the Institute of Slovak Literature in Bratislava before moving to Ljubljana in 2001. With her husband, the poet and editor Primož Repar, she established the international project „Review within review“
linking seven leading cultural journals from Central and South-East Europe. She works as editor with the literary magazines Romboid (Slovakia) and Apokalipsa (Slovenia), and with Apokalipsa’s book-publishing section.
She has published two books of poetry, Zo spoločnej zimy (From a Shared Winter), 1994, and Na hranici jazyka (On the boundary of language), 1997, two books of prose, Krutokradma (Cruelstealth), 1997; Anjelské utópie (Angelic Utopias), 2001,
a book-length essay on the Slovak poet Mila Haugova, and edited the bilingual anthology One Hundred Years of Slovak Literature / Sto let slovaške književnosti (2000).

7. 5. / 12.00 / Komorní sál

Alenka Jensterle-Doležalová was born in 1959. A poet, essayist and literary scholar, she has published numerous articles on Czech and Central European literature and four collections of poetry and prose, including a collection of short stories Juditin most (Judith’s Bridge), 1990. Her book of poems Pokrajine začetka, 1993, was published in Czech translation as Přeludy in 1996. She lives in Prague where she teaches Slovenian literature at Charles University.

7. 5. / 15.00 / Literární sál
8. 5. / 14.00 / stánek L 1009

Brian Keenan was born in Belfast in 1950. In 1985 he took up a post teaching literature at the American University of Beirut.
A year later, he was taken hostage by Islamic Jihad militiamen who believed he was British. The Jihad held Keenan for four years, first in isolation and darkness and later in a shared cell with British journalist John McCarthy. In his memoir An Evil Cradling, 1992 (Kolébka zla, Kalich), Keenan recounts the guards’ violent cruelty and occasional acts of kindness. After their release, Keenan and McCarthy fulfilled their prison fantasy of travelling together in Chile. They co-authored a book about this journey called Between Extremes (1999).
During his captivity Keenan was sustained by the presence of Turlough O’Carolan, the 17th-century blind Irish harper. His novel Turlough (2000) both recreates an extraordinary historical story and honours a commitment Keenan made in his Beirut cell to the being who saved his sanity.

6. 5. / 18.00 / Rakouské kulturní fórum

Daniel Kehlmann, born in Munich in 1975, he now lives in Vienna, where he studied philosophy and literary history. His first novel, Beerholms Vorstellung Beerholm's Conception), was published in 1997, with the short story collection Unter der Sonne (Under the Sun) appearing a year later. Seen by many as a very promising prose writer, he captivates both readers and critics by the clarity of his language, vivid character descriptions, talent for observation, and suggestive story-telling. Czech translation of his book Mahlerův čas (Mahler's Time) is now being published.

6. 5. / 13.15 / Velký sál

China Keitetsi comes from Uganda in East Africa. At nine years old she was kidnapped by Yoweri K. Museveni's National Resistance Army (NRA), and forced to fight in his rebel militia. After fourteen years she managed to escape to South Africa, from where the UN helped her emigrate to Denmark, where she still lives today. In Denmark the head of the Advice Centre for Immigrants suggested that China writes down all her traumatic experiences as part of her psychotherapy treatment, eventually resulting in her autobiographic book Child Soldier: Fighting for My Life.
The book has been published in Germany, Holland, Belgium, United States, United Kingdom, South Africa, and is currently
also appearing on Czech bookshelves, courtesy of MOTTO publishers.
China's book has become a best-seller, and, being the first of its kind, it has deservedly generated much praise. It offers a unique and singular account of the child soldier phenomenon (exploring its causes, but even more importantly its consequences) - issue most of us find impossible to even conceive.
Today China is going on lecture tours around the world, sharing her shocking experiences, and advocating the cause of the over 300 000 child soldiers.

7. 5. / 15.00 / Komorní sál
8. 5. / 17.00 / Velký sál

Declan Kiberd is considered to be one of the world’s preeminent scholars of modern Irish literature. He was born in Dublin in 1951. Kiberd is the author of a number of literary and cultural studies, including the hotly debated
Inventing Ireland (1996), which attempts to place modern Irish literature within a socio-political and historical context. Inventing Ireland won the 1997 Irish Times Literature Award for Non-Fiction and the Oscar Wilde Award for Literary Achievement. The idea for his 2002 Irish Classics originated almost 30 years ago: When Kiberd was a student, he yearned for a book that would treat both Irish and English literature as part of a continuum.
Since no such book existed, he resolved to write it himself.
Kiberd currently holds the chair in Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama at University College, Dublin. He has frequently worked as a visiting professor for other universities,
including Yale, and has lectured on Irish literature in over 25 countries.

7. 5. / 12.00 / Komorní sál

Barbara Korun was born in 1963 in Ljubljana, where she graduated in the Slovene language and comperative literature. She lives and teaches in Ljubljana. She publishes poems, and occasionally writes about literature.
In 1999 her collection of poetry The End of Grace was published and awarded as the best debut of the year. Her poems were published in various anthologies and translated into English, German, Italian, Polish, Bosnian, Macedonian, and Slovak. A book of poetic prose Notes from under the
Table and Chasms, a selection of her poetry in English, were published in 2003. The same year she became a secretary of the Slovene PEN centre.

6. 5. / 16.00 / Komorní sál

Endre Kukorelly was born in Budapest in 1951. He studied literature and librarian studies and started his literary career in the mid-80s.
A representative of Hungarian literary minimalism, he is a leading figure of the middle generation of Hungarian writers. Author of several volumes of poetry, short prose, essays translated into several languages. His novel Tundervolgy (Fairy Valley) was published by the Bratislava-based Hungarian publisher Kalligram last year and was recently awarded the Palladium Prize.

7. 5. / 16.00 / Velký sál

German poet, prose writer, literary theorist and translator Reiner Kunze graduated in philosophy, and journalism.
His sentiments for the Prague Spring, together with his other political stances, meant he faced persecution in the German Democratic Republic. Following his rellocation to West Germany he lectured at universities in Munich and Würzburg. In 1959 he published his literary debut, collection of lyric verse Birds Over the Dew. He later also begun writing prose, and his original script was made into the film The Lovely Years, winning him the Bavarian Film Award. Kunze has also received a number of literary prizes, such as the Bavarian Fine Arts Academy Award, the Georg Trakl Prize, the Andreas Gryphius Prize, the Georg Büchner Prize, the Friedrich Hölderlin Prize, the Federal Order of Merits of the 1st Degree, the Great Federal Order, the European Prize for Poetry. Two years ago he received the Czech-German Understanding Award, and a year later the Slovak Ján Smrek Prize. As early as 1968 Reiner Kunze was awarded the translation prize of the Association of Czechoslovak Writers.
The list of Czech poets translated by Kunze includes Ivan Blatný, Antonín Brousek, Ivan Diviš, František Halas, Vladimír Holan, Miroslav Holub, František Hrubín, Petr Hruška, Petr Kabeš, J. S. Machar, Oldřich Mikulášek, Bohuslav Reynek, Jan Skácel, Karel Šiktanc, and many others. He has also translated prose writers and playwrights into German, such as Ludvík Kundera, Milan Kundera, Ludvík Aškenazy, Václav Havel, and Josef Topol.
He is a member of the Bavarian Fine Arts Academy in Munich, the Free Academy of Art in Mannheim, founding member of the Saxon Art Academy, honorary member of the Association of Hungarian Writers and the Czech PEN.

7. 5. / 11.00 / Literární kavárna
7. 5. / 13.00 / Tiskové středisko
8. 5. / 19.00 / Divadlo Na Prádle

Gearóid Mac Lochlainn is a musician and the author of the Irish-language poetry collections Babylon Gaeilgeoir (1997) and Na Scéalaithe (1999). Thrice the recipient of Arts Council NI bursaries for poetry, he has gained a reputation for giving bilingual readings that are a bold and challenging
mixture of music, poetry, and drama. Mac Lochlainn’s work has appeared in numerous magazines, periodicals, and anthologies. For his first bilingual book, Sruth Teangacha/Stream of Tongues (2002), he collaborated with fellow poets Ciaran Carson, Gabriel Rosenstock, and others to create the English translations. The Poetry Ireland Review says that Stream of Tongues “stands as an evolutionary marker not only in Irish-language literature, but in Irish literarure as a whole”.
He also performs as a musician with the Irish-language reggae band Bréag, and has produced four best-selling original CDs of song and poetry for children.

7. 5. / 12.00 / malý sál (kino)
8. 5. / 19.00 / Divadlo Na Prádle

Kevin MacNeil was born and raised on the Island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland.
His dream of becoming a writer came true in 1998, when his first collection of poetry, Love and Zen in the Outer Hebrides, was published by Canongate. Following the publication of the critically acclaimed collection, MacNeil received the Iain Crichton Smith Fellowship in 1999 and worked as writer-in-residence for the Highlands for three eventful and productive years. During his time in the Highlands, he wrote his next book, Be Wise Be Otherwise (2001), a series of short suggestions and thoughts that flow like a long poem. He currently lives on the Isle of Lewis, where his latest book, the haiku collection Less Is More or Less More, was published in 2003. MacNeil is currently concentrating on prose as much as poetry, and his long-awaited novel Singing for the Blue Men will be with us one of these fine centuries.

8. 5. / 14.00 / Komorní sál
8. 5. / 19.00 / Divadlo Na Prádle

Born in 1952, Robert Minhinnick, essayist and environmental campaigner, is one of the leading poets of his generation. The author of seven collections of poetry, he lives in Porthcawl, on the south coast of Wales.
His most recent volume, After the Hurricane: New Poems (2002) characteristically moves between contrasting landscapes, from Canada, America, and Brazil to Iraq and back to Wales. Minhinnick has also made an important contribution to environmental campaigning in Wales and beyond.
As editor of Poetry Wales, he has been very influential in changing the shape of the contemporary poetry scene in Wales, and in forging an international context for Welsh poetry. He has also been central to opening a dialogue between Welsh-language and English-language Welsh poetry.

8. 5. / 17.00 / Velký sál

Jan Morris was born in 1926. A journalist, travel writer, and historian, she is celebrated all over the world for her descriptions of places and people.
She began her long and colourful career as James Morris, a staff writer with The Times of London, and accompanied the 1953 Everest expedition to claim one of the century’s greatest scoops. Morris is best known for her Pax Britannica trilogy, about the rise and fall of the British Empire, and her studies of Venice, Oxford, Manhattan, Sydney, Hong Kong, Spain, and Wales.
Jan Morris’s complete bibliography includes some 40 books, including fiction such as the satirical novel Our First Leader. Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere (2003), her most recent volume – and last, she claims – was described as one of literature’s most impressive and subtle meditations on old age.

6. 5. / 16.00 / Komorní sál

Gábor Nemeth was born in Budapest in 1956. He studied literature and journalism, has worked as editor at different journals and newspapers, and, since 1994, as editor of literary programmes of the Hungarian Radio.
Author of prose, drama, essays, criticism and film scripts, he is regarded as representative of postmodernist textualism in the middle generation of Hungarian prose writers. He has published five collections of short prose, and his novel Are you Jewish? is coming out this spring with the Bratislava-
based Hungarian publisher Kalligram.

7. 5. / 15.00 / Komorní sál
7. 5. / 16.00 / Literární kavárna
7. 5. / 17.00 / Literární sál
7. 5. / 18.00 / stánek S 201
8. 5. / 13.00 / Komorní sál
8. 5. / 14.00 / stánek S 201

Eilís Ní Dhuibhne was born in Dublin in 1954 and earned her doctorate in folklore and medieval literature at the University College Dublin. Prose writer, playwright, and winner of numerous awards, she has published the short story collections Blood and Water (1988), Eating Women Is Not Recommended (1992), The Inland Ice (1997), and most recently, Midwife to the Fairies: New and Selected Stories (2003). Although most of her original work is in English, Ní Dhuibhne has written two plays in Irish – Dún na mBan Tí Thine (1994) and Milseóg an tSamhraidh (1997) – and the novel Dúnmharú sa Daingean (2000), which was awarded the Oireachtas Prize for Novel in Irish. Her other novels include The Bray House (1990) and The Dancers Dancing (1999). Ní Dhuibhne also writes children’s books, scholarly articles, and reviews.
She lives in Dublin.

7. 5. / 12.00 / Komorní sál

Iztok Osojnik, born 1951 in Ljubljana, is a poet, fiction writer, essayist, translator, artist, tour director and mountain climber. He graduated in Comparative Literature from the University of Ljubljana and did his postgraduate studies at Osaka Gaidai University. At present he is Director of the renowned Vilenica international literary festival. As well as essays on literature, anthropology, and philosophy, he has published eighteen books of poetry, and three novels, including the autobiographical novel The Story of Mr. Pirjevec and Me and poetry collections Darkness of July, Once upon a time there was America, and From the New World - all of which came out in the past three years – and three books of poetry in English translation: Alluminations, And Some Things Happen for the First Time and Mister Today. He has translated poetry from Chinese, English, Spanish and Croatian and his own work has been translated into over ten language. He was honoured with several Slovenian literary awards.

6. 5. / 16.00 / Komorní sál

András Pályi, writer, translator, reviewer, was born in Budapest in 1942 and studied Hungarian and Polish at the Loránd Eötvös University, and drama at the Academy of Theatre and Film Arts. He worked as journalist and editor since 1970, and was Director of the Hungarian Cultural Institute in Warsaw between 1991 and 1995. Since then, he has been a freelance writer.
He has published ten books of prose, including a novel, short stories and essays, and has translated major Polish authors – Z. Herbert, T. Rózewicz, S. Mrozek, W. Gombrowicz and L. Kolakowski – into Hungarian. He has received several prestigious literary awards, and was honoured with an award for the promotion of Polish Culture in 1991..

7. 5. /11.00 / Literární kavárna
7. 5. /17.00 / Komorní sál
8. 5. / 14.00 / Komorní sál
8. 5. / 19.00 / Divadlo Na Prádle

Justin Quinn was born in Dublin in 1968 and educated at Blackrock College and Trinity College, Dublin. Since 1995 he has taught at Charles University in Prague, where he is now a senior lecturer.
He has published three collections of poetry: The O'o'a'a' Bird (1994), which was shortlisted for the Forward Prize; Privacy (1999); and most recently Fuselage (2003).
He also authored Gathered Beneath the Storm: Wallace Stevens, Nature and Community, a critical study of Wallace Stevens. Quinn has written extensively on modern American poetry, and his articles on twentieth-century poetry have appeared in Irish, British, and American journals.
Quinn is a co-editor of the Irish poetry magazine Metre. He translates the work of the Czech poet Petr Borkovec, and his writing draws heavily on the experience of living in Prague.

7. 5. / 12.00 / Komorní sál

Primož Repar was born in 1967 in Ljubljana, where he studied philosophy and history. A poet, translator and essayist, he is the editor-in-chief of the cultural journal Apokalipsa and president of Apokalipsa Association and Publishing House. He has published five books of poetry: Križ in kladivo (Cross and Hammer), 1992, Onkraj sveta je krhka pajčevina (There Is a Fragile Cobweb Beyond the World), 1994, Molitvenik (Book of Prayers), 1995, Mors Barbariorum, 1996, and Alkimija srčnega utripa (The Alchemy of Heartbeat), 1998. His collection of haiku in Slovene and English Gozdovi,
ikone / Woods, Icons will be published this year. His book Spisi o apokalipsi / Essays about Apocalypse, 2000, won him a nomination for the best essayistic book of the year. He has been translating the work of Soeren Kierkegaard and also translates from Serbian, Croatian, Czech and Slovak.

7. 5. / 14.00 / stánek S 201
7. 5. / 16.00 / Literární kavárna
7. 5. / 17.00 / stánek S 201
8. 5. / 13.00 / Komorní sál
8. 5. / 15.00 / Komorní sál

Francesca Rhydderch was born in 1967 and graduated from Newnham College, Cambridge, in Modern and Medieval Language.
She began her editorial career with the cultural magazine Planet: The Welsh Internationalist in 1998 and subsequently became one of the magazine’s associate editors.
She was later appointed commissioning editor for Wales’ largest publishing house, Gomer Press, where she managed development of the press’s English-language titles for adults. In 2002, she was appointed editor of the literary quarterly New Welsh Review, and following a redesign and relaunch of the magazine, has spent the last two years reinvigorating the literary scene in Wales. The magazine is also developing a contemporary, multicultural identity that reflects the cultural and literary concerns of post-devolution Wales.
Personal literary projects since 2002 have included the commissioning and editing of a collection of autobiographical writing about Cardiff, from writers as diverse as Dannie Abse, Gwyneth Lewis, Peter Finch, and Leonora Brito. Francesca Rhydderch is currently working on her first novel.

6. 5. /18.30 / Divadlo Na Prádle
7. 5. /15.00 / Komorní sál
8. 5. / 12.00 / Komorní sál

Born in Dublin in 1965, Keith Ridgeway published his first book, the novella Horses, in 1997.
He followed this quickly by the novel The Long Falling in 1998, which a reviewer for Scotland on Sunday called “the most notable down payment on posterity, and the finest debut novel, I’ve read in years.” Ridgeway’s short story collection Standard Time (2001) won the Rooney Prize. In 2003 Ridgeway published The Parts, a mystery revolving around drug culture in Dublin. The Parts finished at number 36 in the Top 50 Irish Novels (ever) public poll run by The Irish Times and the James Joyce Centre.
The Times says, “Bleak as its vision is in so many respects, this is a novel that simply bursts with energy and incident, with a crowded cast of vivid characters and some enormously enjoyable comic scenes.” In 2002 Ridgeway won two Suspended Sentence residencies in Sydney and Beijing. He now lives in London.

7. 5. / 11.00 / Komorní sál
7. 5. / 12.00 / Literární kavárna
7. 5. / 13.00 / Tiskové středisko
7. 5. / 17.00 / Komorní sál
8. 5. / 19.00 / Divadlo Na Prádle

Poet, translator, and haikuist, Gabriel Rosenstock was born in Kilfinane, County Limerick, in 1949 to an Irish mother and German father. Rosenstock studied at University College Cork, where he associated with the group of poets that started the forum Innti in the 1970’s.
He is the author/ translator of over 100 books, mostly in Irish (Gaelic). Rogha Rosenstock, a selection from 10 different volumes of his poetry, appeared in 1994, and a selection of his children’s poetry, Dánta Duitse, was published in 1998. He edited the classic anthology A Treasury of Irish Love (1998) and published another volume of poetry, Syójó, in 2001. His English-language titles include Portrait of the Artist As an Abominable Snowman (1989) and Cold Moon (1993), a book of erotic haiku. Rosenstock belongs to several international haiku associations, having translated thousands of haiku into Irish. He lives in Dublin, where he works as an assistant editor for An Gúm, an Irish-language publisher.

6. 5. / 15.00 / Komorní sál
7. 5. / 12.00 / Komorní sál

Andrej E. Skubic was born in 1967.
He has been publishing short stories in Slovenian literary magazines since 1989. His first novel Bitter Honey was
published in 1999, and received the 2000 Kresnik Novel of the Year and 2000 Literary Debut of the Year awards.
His second novel, Fuzine Blues, was published in 2001 and was shortlisted for the same award in 2002.
He translated several Irish and Scottish novels (Flann O’Brien, Irvine Welsh, Patrick McCabe, James Joyce) and edited the Anthology of Modern Scottish Short Stories published in 2002. His first book of short stories is due to be published in spring 2004 by Studentska Založba. He teaches Slovenian at the Department of Translation Studies, University of Ljubljana.

7. 5. / 17.00 / Literární sál
8. 5. / 15.00 / Komorní sál
8. 5. / 17.00 / Velký sál

Ned Thomas is currently Academic Director of the Mercator Centre, a research and documentation centre at University of Wales Aberystwyth.
He has played a prominent part in the activities of the European Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages and in the Culture Committee of the Assembly of European Regions.
His earlier career divided between publishing, journalism and university teaching.
A former journalist with Times Newspapers and editor of the British Government's cultural magazine in Russian, Angliya, he has taught literature in the University of Wales. As well as publishing extensively in the field of European minority languages he is the author of critical studies of George Orwell, Derek Walcott, and Waldo Williams.
In Wales he is known as founder-editor and publisher of the magazine Planet – The Welsh Internationalist, and as Director of the University of Wales Press, theacademic publishing house based in Cardiff.
He is Chair of Dyddiol Cyf. a company recently set up to establish the first Welsh language daily newspaper.

7. 5. / 16.00 / Literární kavárna
7. 5. / 17.00 / stánek S 201
8. 5. / 12.00 / Komorní sál
8. 5. / 13.00 / Komorní sál
8. 5. / 14.00 / stánek S 201

The Scottish author Louise Welsh worked for many years as a dealer in second-hand, out-of-print, and antiquarian books. Her first novel, The Cutting Room (2003), draws on her knowledge of this world.
Thus unfolds a gripping tale of pornography, friendship, betrayal, greed, and the humanity that somehow survives the most horrific of human deeds. Welsh’s short stories and articles have been widely published. She lives in Glasgow.

7. 5. / 16.00 / Komorní sál
7. 5. / 17.00 / stánek L 205

Born in 1957 in Warsaw, he graduated in journalism at the University of Warsaw. Between 1981 and 1982 Żakowski held the post of political correspondent at the Solidarity Press Information Bureau, and until 1989 acted as the managing editor of the Powsciagliwosc i Praca monthly. In 1989 he became editor of the electoral department of the Gazeta Wyborcza daily, and was spokesman of the Solidarity group in the Sejm for a year. Between 1990–1991 he was president of the Polish Information Agency, and until 1993 worked as features editor in the Życie Warszawy daily, writing columns for the Gazeta Wyborcza between 1993–2002.
Since 2002 he is commentator in the Polityka weekly.
Jacek Żakowski is also recognised for his contributions to radio and television journalism, and is an active pedagogue
(lectures journalism in Warsaw). He is the author of 14 books, the most recent being a book of interviews also published in Czech as Obavy a naděje.

8. 5. / 11.00 / Velký sál
8. 5. / 12.00 / stánek L 101

Juli Zeh is a young German novelist (1974 in Bonn), whose debut book Adler und Engel, published in Czech as Orli a andělé (Odeon, 2004) has received great acclaim. The novel has been translated into fifteen languages, and is currently being adapted for the screen. It has won its author three literary prizes, most notably the German Book Award for the Best Debut.
Juli Zeh graduated in international law in Passau and Leipzig, and creative writing at the German Literary Institute in Leipzig. She concluded her postgraduate studies with a doctorate in The Law and European Integration.
She spent several months in New York (working for the UN) and Krakow, and has been employed at the German embassy in Zagreb, taking part in the 2003 Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina elections as an observer.
Her short stories were included in several anthologies published by the prestigious publishing houses Rowohlt and DVA, her essays appearing in numerous magazines (Die Welt, Die Zeit, Der Spiegel, Stuttgarter Zeitung).
The launch of her debut novel Adler und Engel published in 2001 by Schöffling press represented a turning point in her career. She has since published a travelogue entitled Die Stille ist ein Geräusch (Schöffling & Co., 2002), giving an account of her travels in Bosnia, and her master's degree thesis Recht auf Beitritt (Nomos Verlag, 2002), dealing with the EU accession of Central and East European countries.