Monday 31 May 2010

Austrians in the UK

This week the good people of London and Hay-on-Wye can catch a couple of Austrian writers live. It's often said that Austrian authors are the most avant-garde in the German-speaking community - but I'll let you be the judge of that.

Lydia Mischkulnig certainly has some of the most avant-garde sunglasses I've ever seen in an invitation to a reading. You can see her in person on Thursday, 3 June at the Austrian Cultural Forum in London. And seeing as everything in the whole world right now is revolving around the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, Mischkulnig is no exception - she won it in 1996. They'd like you to book so there's no pushing and shoving.

Then on Friday, 4 June Clemens Setz is reading at the Guardian Hay festival. Actually he was supposed to be reading in London back in April but there was a slight volcano incident. So here's your chance to see him without even having to leave the sunny climes of Wales. He too has won prizes by the bucketload, including one at the Ingeborg Bachmann competition in 2008. I find he's rather fond of adjectives, but perhaps that's just me.

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