17 October 2013
Collaboration helps festival celebrate creative writing inspired by migration
The Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies (LiFT) is collaborating with the School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies at University College London (UCL) to hold a special free event looking at new writing about migration during Southend’s Polish Arts Festival this weekend.
Migrating Stories is taking place at Clifftown Theatre and Studios in Southend on Saturday 19 October from 2pm-5pm and will feature a number of Polish poets and writers alongside Professor Philip Terry, LiFTS's Director of Creative Writer who has just been shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2013. Essex-based artist and writer Rachel Lichtenstein will also participate in the 'writer's' table' to explore her own Jewish/Polish roots.
The afternoon will include readings by Rachel, Professor Terry, Marek Kazmierski, Wioletta Grzegorzewska, Maria Jastrzębska and host Dr Urszula Chowaniec.
Ros Green, PhD student and Graduate Teaching Assistant at LiFTS, is Director of not-for-profit diversity arts organisation Hungry Arts which hosts the festival.
She said: “The Festival collaborated with LiFTS in 2012, and will be collaborating again in 2013, this time we are working with UCL's School of Slavonic Eastern European Studies for the first time.
"During the event there will be debates, discussions and readings. It is always exciting to bring writers together from different countries to talk about a particular theme and everyone will be talking about what migration means to them and in their writing.
"We are trying to create a very broad festival which celebrates contemporary and the traditional - it is very much about creating new conversations and bringing people together in a positive and creative environment.
"I am very excited as I am involved with the University and the festival so to bring them together and have a collaboration with UCL is great."
Professor Terry has been invited to be part of the festival following his involvement in the Gdansk leg of last year's Polish Arts Festival as part of a twinned Writer's Marathon.
Migrating Stories will be followed by another free event a fabulous programme of Polish animated films courtesy of the Play Poland Film Festival.
The event is an eMigrating Landscapes Project coordinated by the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in cooperation with University of Essex, and London based publisher Off_Press.
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