Posts Tagged ‘William T. Vollmann’

The return of Kosmopolis, the Amplified Literature Festival

December 17th, 2014 No Comments

As 2014 draws to a close, the team of the Centre de Cultura Contemporània is hard at work preparing the programme for next year’s Kosmopolis Amplified Literature Festival, from 18 to 22 March 2015. The festival, which on its eighth outing is extended from three to five days, will once again be converting the spaces of the CCCB into a place where readers meet writers of books and scripts, musicians, playwrights and journalists from around the world.

As always, Kosmopolis promotes literature in all its forms—oral, written, on paper, electronic devices and the stage, with music and on the big screen—and combines talks, readings and lectures with screenings, concerts and live arts.

The full programme of the festival will be announced at the beginning of February 2015. Until then, here’s a preview of some of our outstanding guests and themes.

Among the first international writers to confirm their participation are David Grossman, a big name in literature today with yearly Nobel mentions; Rachel Kushner, the latest revelation in US literature and finalist in the National Book Award 2013; Taiye Selasi, creator of the concept of Afropolitansim and one of the authors in Granta’s collection of the best US short stories of 2013, and William T. Vollmann, an unclassifiable writer considered by David Foster Wallace to be one of the most singular voices of his generation.

Kosmopolis focuses on high-profile aspects of world and literary current affairs, and is organized into themes and sections that form a leading thread through the festival’s large programme of activities.

Solf-portrait of William T. Vollmann

In this coming edition, we’ll be looking at new journalistic narratives and the evolution of investigative journalism, which has taken on special significance in recent years in a context shaken by global crises and the potential of Internet technology for data access and news sharing.

There’ll be a central space about the influence of the writer W. G. Sebald in today’s literature, with dialogues, workshops and screenings associated with The Sebald Variations, the CCCB’s exhibition about this German author who died in 2001. Curated by Jordi Carrión and Pablo Helguera, the exhibit will also have an online space for reflection—the Sebaldian bloghosted by the Kosmopolis webpage.

We’ll be celebrating the 150th anniversary of the publication of Alice in Wonderland. First printed in London in 1865, this book continues to fascinate children and adults, artists, philosophers and quantum physicists, and has had a huge influence on literature, cinema and the plastic arts.

There are new features in the festival’s special sections, too: Kosmopolis Bookcamp, devoted to the world of books and publishing, from Thursday to Saturday, will be exploring the limits and possibilities of the book from different viewpoints. What opportunities does the digital surround offer for expanding stories? Why is there a resistance to exchanging print for e-books? How are major publishing mergers and international sales platforms combining with the boom in new publishers and local bookstores? And Canal Alfa, the audiovisual programme inspired by literature, is back, stronger than ever, with two outstanding new features: the daily premiere of an evening feature film showing and a whole Sunday devoted to TV series of great literary quality!

All this and much more at Kosmopolis 2015!

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