LitHouse podcast

Warsan Shireis a critically acclaimed and award winning British poet. In 2016, the artist Beyoncé named her one of her favorite poets, and she appears both on the album «Lemonade» and in the film «Black Is King». In 2014, she was the first poet named Young Poet Laureate of London.

Shire, born to Somali parents in Kenya and raised in Great Britain, has said that she draws on her own experiences as an immigrant, as well as those of her family and friends in what she writes. Shire has published two chap books,Teaching My Mother How to Give BirthandHer Blue Bodyas well as one full-length poetry collection,Bless the Daughter Raised By a Voice In Her Head. Her poetry explores themes such as girlhood, mothers and daughters, black identity, migration, family and faith in a striking language, interspersed with both references to pop culture and phrases in Somali.

Athena Farrokhzadis a Swedish poet and writer, best known for her debut collectionVitsvit(White Blight), about migration, whiteness and violence. At the Hourse of Literature she joined Shire for a conversation about poetry, marginalized people and their experiences.

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Édouard Louis 2022: In a world dominated by state narratives and information wars, what is the role of the writer?

Power imbalances, exploitation and the dark history of Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe are among the recurring themes in the works of Finnish-Estonian writer and playwrightSofi Oksanen. Her blend of surrealist elements and real-world political plotlines allow for a literary exploration of where political power has been focused historically and where it lies today.

Édouard Louishas long been an admirer of Oksanen’s works. The two authors are also politically active in their home countries, and now meet for a conversation on speaking (and writing) truth to power. What does it mean to be a political writer?

The conversation will be moderated byAne Farsethås, critic, author, and cultural editor in Morgenbladet.

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Édouard Louis 2022: Alan Hollinghurst and Édouard Louis have long read each other’s books with great interest. While Louis has written brutally honest depictions of growing up gay in a homophobic family and environment, Hollinghurst’s fiction explores gay culture and experience through the decades, including the AIDS crisis and gay life prior to decriminalization in the UK. While Norway marks 50 years since homosexuality was decriminalized this year, LGBT rights are being curbed around the world, and this year’s Oslo Pride ended in a fatal shooting. In such a climate, is the gay writer forced into an activist role by virtue of their being gay? Is there a pressure to represent when writing from a minority perspective? In this conversation, Hollinghurst and Louis will talk about their relationship to each other’s books, about the role of gay literature and the plight of the gay writer. Leading the conversation is Knut Olav Åmås , director of the Free Word Foundation.

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Édouard Louis 2022: In his most recent book,Changer : méthode, Édouard Louis shows just how indebted he is, as a writer and thinker, to the works of the French academic and authorDidier Eribon. Ever since seeing him lecture early in his life, Louis and Eribon have developed a deep understanding of the other’s works and ideas, with Eribon’s novelRetour à Reimseven providing the foundation for Louis’ debut novelEn finir avec Eddy Bellegueule. In this talk, Eribon gives us his view on Louis’ authorship and explores the many ways in which his literature overlaps with the political and translates to real political power.

Didier Eribon is a French philosopher, author and historian, and has written many highly acclaimed works on class, homosexuality, psychoanalysis and Michel Foucault, among other subjects.

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Édouard Louis 2022: A lecture by Maaza Mengiste, introduction by Édouard Louis. What is the responsibility of the writer in documenting and unpicking the violence around us? In Édouard Louis’s bookThe History of Violence, he explores violence from the point of view of the victim of rape and attempted murder, but also the violence that the perpetrator has experienced from society. In the novelsBeneath the Lion’s GazeandThe Shadow King, about the bloody Ethiopian revolution and Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia,Maaza Mengistehas herself explored forms of violence – both on an individual level and on the level of society.

In this personal lecture, Mengiste will talk about her relationship to Louis’s novel and give us her own reflections on the writer’s place in a violent world.

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Édouard Louis 2022: A young gay person escapes their small town in search of friendship and love in the big city. A recurring theme as much in real life as in literature.

In his most recent book,Change: Method, Édouard Louis delves deeper into his own journey – as told inThe End of Eddy– from his poor upbringing and to the cultural elite in Paris, and the deliberate steps he took along the way to reinvent himself.

In writing the book, Louis was deeply inspired byAlan Hollinghurst’s award winning novelThe Line of Beauty. Both books follows a gay protagonist trying to fit in within a different class than the one they were born into.

Alan Hollinghurst is the author novels such asThe Line of Beauty, The Stranger’s ChildandThe Sparsholt Affair.

In this personal lecture, he shares his reading ofChange: Methodand reflections on shared themes such as class, culture and sexuality.

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Édouard Louis 2022: This lecture was held on November 18th at The House of Literature in Norway, during their three days of conversations, lectures, and events fromÉdouard Louis’writing and works.The lecture was written for this occasion and centres around Louis’ recent experience of losing his older brother.

Few writers have championed the working class like Édouard Louis. In each of his five novels, he portrays the struggles and aspirations of an often undermined and ignored group, exemplified by a family member or himself. His literature concerns itself with the psychological obstacles to self-fulfilment and shows how the strongest contempt for the working class is often held by the people within it. Louis was also vocal in supporting the Yellow Vests movement in 2018.

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In Checkout 19 Claire-Louise Bennett writes about the joy of reading, about when fiction becomes so vividly alive that you take it with you into the real world. Through a series of chapters - told in I-, she- and even we-form - we follow the main character's development from a little girl to an adult woman, through childhood, promiscuity and bad boyfriends. At the same time, there is a development from reader to author, but not without a series of derailments and tortuous detours: A meeting with a customer at the supermarket becomes the starting point for a detailed story about his background. An early self-written story emerges in the strangest directions. Claire-Louise Bennett's language is a cornucopia, and in a playful and original way she takes us into her rich and curious world.

This conversation took place at the House of Literature in Oslo. On stage Bennet was joined by the Norwegian author and poet Amalie Kasin Lerstang.

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What is life like for young and regime-critical Russians today? Kira Yarmysh is best known in Russia as a spokeswoman for the Russian oppositional politician Alexei Navalny. Now her debut novel Incredible Incidents in Women's Cell No. 3 is making headlines. In Russia, the book was quickly branded as "gay propaganda" by Russian authorities, due to depictions of same-sex love. Throughout the book, Yarmysh depicts a modern and contrast-filled Russia. Like her main character, Yarmysh is no stranger to the inside of a Russian prison cell, having herself been arrested at several demonstrations. She has been open about the book being based on her own experiences.At the House of Literature, Yarmysh met Norwegian politician Jette F. Christensen for a conversation about Yarmysh’s novel. Christensen is a political scientist and former parliamentary representative, with more than ten years of experience from the Storting's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. Today she is Vice President of the Council of the Norwegian Helsinki Committee.

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“Ukrainians have never accepted censorship. They have always wanted to say and write what they think. That is why almost all Ukrainian writers and poets in the 1920s and 1930s were shot by Soviet authorities… If Russia succeeds, we will have a new generation of executed writers and politicians, philosophers and philologists."

How should one fight for freedom of speech and facts in a war of propaganda? What can literature and art contribute in dark times? And when does the situation require the author to resort to other tools and weapons than literature?

Andrey Kurkov is one of Ukraine's most prominent writers, with nearly 30 publications for adults and children under his belt, including the novelsDeath and the PenguinandFriends of the Dead. He has been translated into more than 30 languages.Kurkov is the leader of PEN Ukraine, and has been strongly committed to the Russian invasion and to Ukraine's independence and freedom of expression. In this lecture, Kurkov addresses the situation for Ukrainian writers and journalists in Ukraine and provides an insight into Ukrainian history.

All ticket proceeds from this talk went to PEN Ukraine.

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