Anna Luyten
(Belgium, 1963) is a journalist, philosopher, and literature and theatre scholar. She has interviewed many big names from the art world for Belgian public television, and was the jury chairwoman of the Golden Owl prize from 2000 to 2006. She has written for newspapers and magazines such as De Morgen and De Standaard, and Knack, Humo and Vrij Nederland. For a commission from the Flanders and Klara festivals, she reworked a reportage into an opera libretto. She is a core contributor to the "living books programme" Uitgelezen, and was a visiting professor of art philosophy at The School of Arts in Gent. As a writer-in-residence in Bucharest she wrote De weg van de mier (The Way of the Ant), about a Romanian chauffeur who misses his lover, who fled the Ceaucescu regime. She makes IM (In Memoriam) for the Flemish-Dutch Huis de Buren institute, a multi-year series in which talks to well-known people about how they'd like to be remembered.
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Archive available for: Anna Luyten
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Anna Luyten in Conversation with Connie Palmen
With: Anna Luyten, Connie Palmen
"All great literature is about the fight against evil." Connie Palmen places these words in the mouth of the poet Ted Hughes in her most recent novel, Jij zegt het (Whatever You Say), a fictional autobiography of the poet who stayed silent for 35 years after the 1963 suicide of his wife, poet Sylvia Plath. But how can Palmen's character fight against evil while being conscious of the fact that violence and destruction lurk at the core of love? When destruction and creation alternate as predominant forces in a love relationship? When his own rational and animal instincts are always locked in battle? Does this struggle even make sense when everything is written in the stars? Connie Palmen examines these dilemmas in an interview with Anna Luyten. How does she herself see Hughes' story in relation to reality?
Prior to this event you can attend the NRC Book Club Live, which discusses Connie Palmen's novel Lucifer.
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The Limits of Empathy
Indo-British writer Neel Mukherjee made the shortlist for the Man Booker Prize with his ambitious novel The Lives of Others, a tale of limited empathy and missing bonds within a large family. The Dutch translation will be presented during the festival. Connie Palmen wrote Jij zegt het (Whatever You Say), a bestseller about the poet Ted Hughes, whose wife, poetess Sylvia Plath, committed suicide after the limits of their love had been reached. Power plays a major role in both of these families. Does evil lurk in every relationship? Anna Luyten gets the discussion started.
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Hello, Poetry and Music
At the end of the evening, let yourself be seduced by poetry from home and abroad. Listen to young poets Jeroen van Rooij and Runa Svetlikova and meet acclaimed poets like Adonis and Michael Krüger. MC Anna Luyten also introduces three nominees of the VSB Poetry Prize: Geert van Istendael, Maud Vanhauwaert and Pieter Boskma. Varied music by Dick van der Harst and his musicians will let you dream the night away. As a special commission by the festival, he sets one of Adonis' poems to music.