Reading with Lejla Kalamujić

Reading with Lejla Kalamujić
– The Nomansland cycle-

Artist talk hosted by Jennifer Zoble
Moderation, deutschsprachige Lesung: Melisa Slipac

October 30, 2021, 7:30 p.m.
Cluster – Zigutamve Photography
Zieglergasse 34
1070 Wien

Lejla Kalamujić was born in 1980 in Sarajevo, where she took a degree in philosophy and sociology. She is the author of three short-story collections – the 2008 Anatomija osmijeha (“Anatomy of a Smile”), Zovite me Esteban (Call Me Esteban), which appeared in 2015, and Požuri i izmisli grad (“Hurry, Make up a City”), published this year. The book Call Me Esteban won the 2015 “Edo Budiša” prize awarded by Istria County in Croatia for the best regional short story collection. In 2020 she published a collection of plays titled Šake pune oblaka (“Fistfuls of Clouds”). Her stories and plays have been translated into several languages.

Jennifer Zoble translates Balkan and Spanish-language literature into English. She teaches writing and translation in Liberal Studies at NYU, and is teaching at NYU Florence for the 2021-22 academic year. Her translation of Mars by Asja Bakić (Feminist Press, 2019) was selected by Publishers Weekly for the fiction list in its “Best Books 2019” issue. Call Me Esteban, her translation of Zovite me Esteban by Lejla Kalamujić, is forthcoming from Sandorf Passage in September 2021, and was undertaken with support from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA).

„Tamistad“
reading cycles 2021-2023
Program
Tamistad is a portmanteau blending the words “Tamizdat” and “Amistad”. “Tamizdat” refers to the censored literature from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe published in the West during the Cold War. The Spanish word “Amistad” means “friendship”.

Austria, its cosmopolitan capital of Vienna in particular, is home to many people from other countries. Their connections and relations with their countries of origin are multifarious and have to be examined through the prism of arts and culture. At the same time, literature from other parts of the world is of great significance for the cultural growth of Austrians.
The goal of the project Tamistad is to support this two-way relation, facilitate and shape intercultural literary exchange, as well as to make physical borders permeable through literature and encourage the audience to step over them. In this regard, it is important that the exchange does not take place within a single cultural space, but to venture across its boundaries. Therefore we would like to invite authors from different parts of the world, who are willing and able to contribute to the exchange in the spirit of global good neighbourhood.

The project comprises three cycles, each with a particular focal point. The first, titled NENOMAD focuses on the authors who, for whatever reasons, do not leave or have never left their home country. The second, titled NOMAD is devoted to the “placeless” authors, those who often change or have changed their place of residence, and derive inspiration from nomadism. The third cycle, titled NOMADNENOMAD focuses on authors who see themselves as belonging to neither or both of the two groups.
The focus of the fourth cycle titled NOMANSLAND is on authors from Bosnia and Herzegovina. This cycle is separate from the other three, but on the other it is bound up with them.

The Tamistad series of readings is a continuation or further development of .dɩtiramb’s previous literary projects. The project idea revolves round the readings, but will be broadened by the planned artist talks, to facilitate artistic and cultural exchange.