Luftwurzeln // Aerial Roots

Birgül Oğuz is a Turkish writer, translator, and quiet companion to music. Her work explores the inner landscapes of memory, language, and human connection. She studied comparative literature, cultural studies, and English literature.Her first book, Fasulyenin Bildiği, a collection of short fiction, received the Yaşar Nabi Nayır Prize in 2007. Her second, the novella Hah, won the European Union Prize for Literature in 2014. In 2020, she published İstasyon, a meditative novella on loneliness, friendship, and faith. For years, she gave public lectures at a theatre house in Istanbul on literary works spanning from ancient texts to modern novels.Oğuz also translates literature from English into Turkish. Her published translations include several novels, among them Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping. Her own writing has been translated into several languages, including English, French, German, Polish, and Armenian. She lives in İstanbul.

Evgenia Lopata is a cultural manager and translator, director of the Meridian Czernowitz International Poetry Festival, editor-in-chief of the Meridian Czernowitz publishing house and a manager of cultural projects in Europe and Ukraine. In 2022 and 2023, Evgenia Lopata curated a large edition of the anthology »State of War«, a collection of essays by leading Ukrainian writers and intellectuals about the full-scale invasion to Ukraine and the resistance of Ukraine and Ukrainians which will be published in German in 2025. Since the beginning of Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine, she has been actively organizing the presence of modern Ukrainian authors in the German-speaking cultural space. Parallelly, over the past three years, Evgenia Lopata has been actively involved in the presence of Ukrainian culture in southern Ukraine: she organized e. g. two major literary festivals in Odesa, as well as in the frontline cities of Mykolaiv, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia.

Iryna Shuvalova is a poet, translator, and scholar from Ukraine. Five poetry volumes have been published in Ukrainian, in 2019 the collection »Pray to the Empty Wells« was published in English. Her most recent collection of poems in Ukrainian titled »endsongs« (»кінечні пісні«) was published in 2024; her poems have been translated into twenty-five languages. She translated e.g. poems by Louise Glück and Alice Oswald into Ukrainian. Among her book-length translation projects are Rupi Kaur’s »Milk and Honey« (2019) and Yann Martel’s »Life of Pi« (2016). 2023 her co-translation of of Ostap Slyvynsky’s »The Winter King« (into English) with Vitaly Chernetsky was published​. Shuvalova lives in Oslo.

Jean-Chat Tekgyozyan, born in Yerewan in 1974 is a writer and playwright, currently living in Strasbourg. He has become known for his first novel »Fleeting City« published in 2012. His plays »Metastasis« and »Non-People« were staged by independent theaters in Armenia. His second novel »Skin Pain« was awarded with Orange Book Prize in 2012. Most recently his novel »Shelter« (Actual Art Publishing House, 2023) was published. His novels have been translated in multiple languages and published for example in Serbia, France, Canada, Turkey and Greece.

Lal Laleş, born in 1975 in Mardin, based in Diyarbakır. He worked for independent theatre groups as playwright and dramaturg between 1993 and 2006. As one of the leading figures of contemporary Kurdish poetry and Kurdish language rights activism, after three poetry books in Kurmanjî dialect of Kurdish, he published his first Turkish poetry book in 2023. His poems have been translated into Turkish, Arabic, Swedish. He is the founder and the director of Lîs Publishing, a Kurdish publishing house in Diyarbakır, since 2004 and Diyarbakır Literature House since 2020. Within Lîs Publishing, he has been translating poetry from Turkish to Kurdish.

Tatev Chakhian, born in 1992 in Yerevan, is a Poland-based Armenian poet and translator. She studied Cultural Anthropology and International Relations and Border Studies. Chakhian’s literary journey began with her debut poetry collection, »unIDentical«, in 2016. In 2018, the Polish title »Dowód (Nie)osobisty« was published and nominated for the European Poet of Freedom Award. »Migrant Point«, her second poetry collection, offers an exploration of the intricate layers of migrant experience. Her poetry has been featured in over twenty languages worldwide. Chakhian translates and promotes Polish and Anglo-American literature. She is also practising boxing — in case poetry doesn’t hit the mark …

Żanna Słoniowska is a Ukrainian-born Polish novelist and translator. She writes reviews for various newspapers, e.g. New York Times, L’Express, Gazeta Wyborcza, Tygodnik Powszechny. Besides, she works as a translator and interpreter for various organizations, e.g. International Cultural Centre in Krakow, Teatr Stary, Conrad Festival and others. Her novel »Dom z witrażem« (»The House with the Stained-Glass Window«) won the Znak literary prize in 2015 and Conrad Prize for the best Polish literary debut of 2016. Besides she translates the Polish literary masterpieces into Ukrainian language for the Institute of Literature. Słoniowska’s own novels have been translated into 10 languages, among them English, French, German, Spanish, Serbian.

aerial root © Miji Ih, Hara Shin

aerial root © Miji Ih, Hara Shin

aerial root © Miji Ih, Hara Shin