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CROSSING BORDER CROSSING BORDER FESTIVAL THE HAGUE FESTIVAL THE HAGUE CROSSING BORDER FESTIVAL 3 – 8 NOVEMBER 2026

3 – 8 NOVEMBER 2026

A RUMOUR OF WITCHCRAFT

Are you a real live child? She whispered then. But I could not answer, could not even blink, and the chest would then be closed again, and because I could see nothing but the lid, I decided to perceive my surroundings with my back, and with my back I heard and saw the Limfjord, the quaysides and the marketplace. I saw the mound with its gallows dripping with rain. Olga Ravn — The Wax Child

SHORE It’s stranger on the shore. Out here beyond the pleasant green interior, you come face to face with something wilder, vaster, more primordial. Michael Smith — Strangers on the Shore

COVER DESIGN: O.O.P.S. / IMAGE USED BY PERMISSION OF NEW DIRECTIONS

STRANGERS ON THE

IS THIS FOR REAL? Dry Cleaning

Édouard Louis / aja monet / Jeanette Winterson Adania Shibli / R.F. Kuang 100+ artists

LITERATURE & MUSIC

WWW.CROSSINGBORDER.NL

LITERATURE & MUSIC

WWW.CROSSINGBORDER.NL

CROSSING BORDER FESTIVAL

3 – 8 NOVEMBER 2025 THE HAGUE

Crossing Édouard Louis, Dry Cleaning, Olivia Laing, Border 2026

An overview of this year's artists:

Crossing Border is the Netherlands’ leading international literature and music festival. The 34th edition takes place from 3 to 8 November 2026 at the Koninklijke Schouwburg and other iconic venues throughout The Hague, such as an original Spiegeltent set up especially for the occasion. The festival’s aim is to connect and inspire people through imaginative storytelling and artistic vision. It brings together renowned international authors for exclusive appearances, introduces promising debut writers to Dutch audiences, and features alternative music acts in intimate live performances.

Festival locations:

Koninklijke Schouwburg Royal Theatre Korte Voorhout 3 Red Eyed Fly Spiegeltent Lange Voorhout 74 (in front of Escher in Het Paleis) Borderkitchen Kerkstraat 13 Theater De Vaillant Hobbemastraat 120

R.F. Kuang, aja monet, Georgi Gospodinov, Jaap Robben, Jeanette Winterson, Anna Enquist, Tony Tulathimutte, Adania Shibli, Oksana Zaboezjko, Cristina Rivera Garza Flora Hibberd, Frans Kalf, Barbi Markovic, Catherine Lacey, Sally Hayden, S.A. Cosby, Modern Woman, Zoh Amba, LYR, Bent van Looy, Jonny Bruce, Michaël Vandebril, Abdelrahman ElGendy, Amaranta Caballero Prado, Dominique De Groen, Michael Smith, Olga Ravn, Tobi Dahmen, Harriet Clark, Peter Verhelst, Johan Tahon, Jowi Len, Malavika Kannan, Fuzzy

This year’s programme includes over 80 writers and artists who will perform in different settings, some of them participating in special projects that are unique to Crossing Border.

Teeth, Lisette Ma Neza, Julien Staartjes, Asmae Amaddaou, Zaïre Krieger, Jalil Sultani, Bob Vanden Broeck, Pelumi Adejumo, Soukaïna Bennani,

Programme Paalman, Nicolien Mizee, KAFKA, Marieke Ornelis, Gerbrand Bakker, Niña 3 – 8 November Weijers, Roufaida, Filip Grujić, Caragh Maxwell, Isa Davids, Ibe Rossel, David Weel, Mina Etemad, Nawras Altaky, stay away from dante!, Iduna

Clyo Mendoza, Lena van Tijen, Gwyn Bouwman, Eva Leek, Mikayla Vieira

Tuesday, November 3

Special: Peter Verhelst & Johan Tahon

Ribeiro, Christine Koopman, Cécile Wajsbrot, Josephine Rijnaarts, Dan

20:00 – 21.00 Borderkitchen

Wednesday, November 4

English, David Keenan, Penelope Isles, Atef Abu Said, Nathacha Appanah,

Crossing Border NXT 19:00 – 21:00 Spiegeltent

Beyhan Gültaşlar, Jean-Claude Mourlevat, Jarvis, Joe Todd-Stanton, Tina

Thursday, November 5

You'll have to scream LOUDER! X Het Zwarte Schaap 19:00 – 21:00 Spiegeltent

Friday, November 6

SPECIAL * SPECIAL * SPECIAL * SPECIAL

18:00 – 23:30 Koninklijke Schouwburg & Spiegeltent

Day programme

11:00 – 16:00 Various locations

European Literature Prize Award Ceremony 16:30 – 17:30 Spiegeltent

Festival evening

SCAN THIS QR CODE FOR OUR COMPLETE PROGRAMME

18:00 – 23:30 Koninklijke Schouwburg & Spiegeltent

Sunday, November 8

Crossing Border Kids

11:00 – 16:00 Theater De Vaillant

Pop up: Other World Bookshop The Other World Bookshop is located in the foyer of the Royal Theatre. Books by all featured authors will be available for purchase, and authors will sign books after their appearances, usually in the foyer.

Still have questions? Please contact us at info@crossingborder.nl

Peter Verhelst & Johan Tahon Belgian artist Johan Tahon and poet and writer Peter Verhelst will be kicking things off with a special programme on Tuesday, November 3. Peter Verhelst (1962) is a multi-award-winning Belgian author of

poetry, novels and plays. He frequently collaborates with visual artists and filmmakers. For his books, he has been awarded, amongst others, the Constantijn Huygens Prize, the Sybren Polet Prize and the Grote Poëzieprijs (for Zabriskie). He is currently working on the final draft of a novel due to be published in April 2027. Johan Tahon (1965) is a Belgian artist, best known for his sculptures. From a young age, he had already discovered that objects lent a lightness to the darkness of existence. He went on to study sculpture at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK) in Ghent, and was a player in the international art arena before the age of thirty. Restless and filled with longing for the inexpressible, Johan Tahon explores the boundaries of the great unknown.

Festival evening

Saturday, November 7

De Gendt, Sara De Martino, Ulrich Hub, Marta Altes, Rocío Pérez Vallejo

November 3 > 20:00 > Borderkitchen, Kerkstraat 13

LITERATURE & MUSIC

CROSSING BORDER FESTIVAL CROSSING BORDER

3 – 8 NOVEMBER 2025 THE HAGUE

4 & 7 NOVEMBER

Curious about the person behind the book and the story

This year we’ll dive into how it is growing up as Gen Z. We’ll

and live music by FUZZY TEETH. Hosted by Nanoah Struik.

that inspired it? Or looking for new friends to share your

discuss themes such as identity, activism, climate change

Then there’s a very special NXT-spin-off during the day

reading adventures with? Then you’ve come to the right

and more. An interview with writer Malavika Kannan from

programme of November 7: R. F. Kuang is coming to Crossing

place! Join us at our YA event on the 4th of November,

New York, who is making waves in the US with her recently

Border to talk about her new book Taipei Story, which will

Crossing Border NXT.

published book Unprecedented Times. Poetry by Jowi Len

also be featured in the brand-new what's nxt boookclub!

Malavika Kannan Jowi Len Kemper

Malavika Kannan is an American writer and journalist whose work

focuses on identity, friendship, queer love, coming of age and the search for belonging. Her novel Unprecedented Times is set during the pandemic and follows a young climate activist as she searches for meaning, connection and her place in the world.

Jowi Len Kemper is a spoken-word artist and writer. Her work explores cross-cultural experiences and themes including identity, sexuality and freedom. Drawing on her perspective as a Third Culture Kid and Southeast Asian woman, she uses storytelling to build bridges and create connections. Her work has been presented through visual media by Het Nieuwe Instituut and Grande Loge.

FUZZY TEETH is the project of The Hague-based Anthony Koenn. Hard

to pin down, the music ranges from danceable indie to full-on mosh-pit mayhem. Always surprising, always unmistakably FUZZY TEETH. Nanoah Struik is an activist, writer, speaker, podcast and content

creator, and self-employed entrepreneur. Nanoah also wrote the book Benin Boi, which was published earlier this year. In Benin Boi, they explore their identity through a journey to Nigeria with their father. With the podcast In Afrika besta ik niet (‘I don’t exist in Africa’), they won the Young Talent Podcast Award in 2024. They will be hosting the event.

Rebecca F. Kuang © JOHN PACKMAN

Rebecca F. Kuang will come to Crossing Border for an interview about her new book Taipei Story. It has recently been published in Dutch as Mijn zomer in Taipei, translated by Hi-en Montijn. Rebecca F. Kuang is the award-winning author of the international bestsellers Babel, Katabasis, and Yellowface. She studied Chinese Studies at the University of Cambridge and Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Oxford. She is currently pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale University. Following her successful novels in fantasy and satire, Kuang demonstrates her versatility once again with Taipei Story, mastering a new style: the coming-of-age novel.

College freshman Lily Chen is off to spend the summer in Taipei at an intensive language program like so many Chinese American students before her, hoping to connect with the

culture she inherited but never fully understood. But a promising start quickly unravels. Her classes are grueling, her roommate is driving her insane, and a reckless trip to the hot springs with a guy she barely knows soon has her classmates viciously gossiping. She feels adrift, a foreigner in a country she thought would feel like home. Then shocking news arrives: Lily's grandfather has passed away. The loss forces her to grapple with now-unanswerable questions about her family history. As Lily grieves, she's drawn into a journey of selfdiscovery, piecing together memories, stories, and silences over a series of hilarious and devastating attempts at connection. Taipei Story asks: What if the diaspora fantasy of homecoming never comes true? What if learning a language can't bring you any closer to the

4 November > 19:00 – 21:00 Red Eyed Fly, Spiegeltent, Lange Voorhout 74

people you're trying to reach? What if you search for your family's history, but your family doesn't want to share? What if you wait too long to ask the right questions? As Lily struggles for answers, her summer becomes a poignant search for understanding of herself, her family, and the meaning of home.

Afterwards, R. F. Kuang will be signing books. Copies will be available for purchase at the event.

what's nxt boookclub Taipei Story will be read during the very first edition of the what's nxt boookclub on September 29. The event is hosted by Lau Feenstra (@readbylau on Instagram). Stay tuned for the next boookclub announcement! 7 November > 13:00 Koninklijke Schouwburg, The Raven

NEWS, PROGRAMME & TICKETS: CROSSINGBORDER.NL

CROSSING BORDER FESTIVAL

3 – 8 NOVEMBER 2025 THE HAGUE

5 NOVEMBER 19:00 – 23:00 SPIEGELTENT You'll have to scream LOUDER X Het Zwarte Schaap

open and vulnerable narrative about doubts, the literary world, queerness, and a paradoxical existence. We’ll also hear from Asmae Amaddaou about her debut collection Brand lieverd brand. With her lyrical and classical poems, she draws you into a poetry driven by necessity that is at times painful yet also offers the reader comfort.

On the Thursday of the festival week, November 5, Crossing Border will once again be dedicated to tomorrow’s writers and creators. This year’s programme is particularly special, as it’s a collaboration with Het Zwarte Schaap. Join us for a live literary show celebrating emerging voices in Dutchlanguage literature. These are writers on the verge of breaking through, including those who have just made their debut, writers working on new manuscripts, and creators ready to take the Dutch literary scene by storm. As the icing on the cake, this evening will feature a very special announcement from You’ll have to scream LOUDER! and Het Zwarte Schaap. You really don’t want to miss this!

Debut novelists Julien Staartjes and Bob Vanden Broeck also draw us into their stories, where a series of unexpected events will keep you gripped. In Julien’s Twijfelwond, just when you think you know how things will turn out for characters who are at the start of their careers, you are surprised time and time again. In Bob’s Je zit op een stoel, a second-person narrative brings you close to a series of moments that may or may not take place. In this experimental work, Bob illustrates the experience of mental and physical entrapment.

This year, we’ll be delving into a variety of new literary works, including the highly anticipated debut novel by Zaïre Krieger, Chameleon. In her book, she takes you on a journey through various personas, each being part of an

We’ll hear first-hand accounts from poets working on their debut or another major project. Pelumi Adejumo’s work explores multilingualism, mythology and the body. We’ll also listen to the musical poetry of Brussels’ city poet Lisette Ma Neza, who is originally from The Hague.

Zaïre Krieger

Bob Vanden Broeck

Zaïre Krieger (1995) is a

Bob Vanden Broeck is a

Jalil Sultani will also be performing; he explicitly incorporates the context of the stage into his poetry. The evening will open with a musical interpretation of Mina Etemad’s work. She made her debut this year with De zangvogel, a beautiful narrative in which she juxtaposes the painful questions surrounding her flight from Iran with the reality of who and what she had to leave behind. She’ll be performing together with composer, singer and Ud player Nawras Altaky. stay away from dante! is also on the programme. Fresh from impressive performances at Noorderslag and in Paradiso, this conceptual music act will make itself heard in our festival tent. Dante’s sound carries you along through dreamy and idiosyncratic harmonies, where rap and vocals reinforce each other. Inspired by Stevie Wonder and Tyler, the Creator, he makes storytelling an indispensable part of his music. Hosted by Soukaïna Bennani and David Weel.

5 November > 19:00 Red Eyed Fly, Spiegeltent, Lange Voorhout 74

Jalil Sultani Jalil Sultani is a multi-

poet, spoken-word artist and interdisciplinary artist. Her work is a powerful call for justice and love. Her performances are rhythmic, visceral and layered, with a sharp eye for social issues. In 2019, she received a Spoken Award, recognising her as one of the most inspiring spoken-word artists of her generation. In 2021, she translated Amanda Gorman’s The Hill We Climb into Dutch. In 2026, her long-awaited debut poetry collection, Chameleon, was published. In the collection, she takes us through a series of different personas, each one part of an open and vulnerable exploration of doubt, the literary world, queerness and the paradoxes of existence.

Flemish writer and notorious tinkerer. His work is driven by a fascination with the way we perceive the world. He sees our eyes as constantly moving through different layers of reality, both physical and virtual. He is fascinated by the way language shapes what we see and likes to explore the space between words and becoming. In 2023, he published his poetry debut, de richting is richting omleiding, which won the Poetry Debut Prize 2024 and the Debutants’ Prize 2025. His debut novel, Je zit op een stoel, was published by Koppernik in April 2026. It is a kaleidoscopic portrait of a man trapped in the monotonous routine of everyday life, desperately trying to get up.

disciplinary artist who uses text and poetry to capture his observations of the world. In his spare time, he can be found skipping through parks in search of a willow tree to hang his lyre from. He is convinced that his dog understands him and that he’d probably survive in the wild. Jalil is searching for an extreme somewhere in the middle. In Jalil’s performances, both the text and the space are integral to the presentation of his work.

Asmae Amaddaou

Pelumi Adejumo

Mina Etemad

Asmae Amaddaou (2001) is a

Pelumi Adejumo is a writer

Mina Etemad is a writer,

journalist and theatre and dance critic for de Volkskrant. The ways in which we relate to our past and future are recurring themes in her work. She also explores animal rights and examines human-animal relationships in art, the media and society, including through her newsletter Dier en Perspectief. Her debut, De zangvogel, was published in February 2026. A memoir about Iran, displacement and a lingering sense of guilt. Because is there something that you owe to life if you are able to live with greater freedom than the people of your homeland?

Julien Staartjes

Lisette Ma Neza

stay away from dante!

her sharp writing, gentle voice and captivating slam poetry. Her work explores the intimate experience of growing from girlhood into womanhood, the quiet violence that can take place in the bedroom, and the devastating scale of violence such as genocide. Once The Hague’s city poet, she has been Brussels’ city poet since 2024 and was awarded the Jonge Veer this year. Now travelling the world like a modern-day troubadour, she brings her poetry and music to the stage. At Crossing Border, she will share a first taste of her long-awaited poetry debut.

Emmanuel Adomah Boateng

(2000) is a versatile musician from Amsterdam-Zuidoost who performs as stay away from dante! (Dante to his friends). He quickly stands out for his distinctive compositions and carefully crafted stage presence. Fresh from impressive performances at Noorderslag and Paradiso, this conceptual music project comes to the Spiegeltent in November. Dante’s sound takes you through dreamy, offbeat harmonies, where rap and vocals complement and reinforce each other. Inspired by artists such as Stevie Wonder and Tyler, the Creator, storytelling is at the heart of his music. © TYLER CHAN

writer, musician and marketing specialist for two major arthouse cinemas in Amsterdam. He is one of the organisers of the multidisciplinary literary programme Wennen aan de Wolf. His short stories have appeared in literary magazines including DW B, Kluger Hans, Hard//hoofd and Tirade. Twijfelwond is his debut novel, exploring the lives of people at the very start of their careers. During the programme, we delve deeper into the worlds of these characters and the uncertainty, ambition and vulnerability that come with finding your way in working life.

Lisette Ma Neza is known for

Julien Staartjes (1989) is a

and multidisciplinary artist. Her practice explores the intersections of multilingualism, the body, mythology and collective memory, often through sound, performance and text. At Crossing Border, she will share a selection of her work. Pelumi studied Creative Writing at ArtEZ and holds a Master’s degree in Fine Art from the Dutch Art Institute. In 2023, she received the Frans Vogel Poetry Prize for her multilingual work, and in 2020, NRC selected her as one of the most promising artists in the Netherlands and Belgium. She is also a programmer and translator for the international literature festival Read My World. © ORIANA CAMARA

writer, poet and spoken-word artist. She graduated from HKU in 2023 and was selected for the Slow Writing Lab, a programme of the Dutch Foundation for Literature. She has previously performed at venues and events including Nacht van de Poëzie and Lowlands. At Crossing Border, Asmae Amaddaou will share work from her debut poetry collection, Brand lieverd brand. Through lyrical, classically styled poems, she takes us into a poetry born of necessity, one that can be painful at times but also offers comfort to the reader.

LITERATURE & MUSIC

CROSSING BORDER FESTIVAL

3 – 8 NOVEMBER 2025 THE HAGUE

Fancy a fresh batch of brand-new stories?

Meet this year’s participants of THE CHRONICLES The Chronicles is our residency programme for young Dutch and international writers and translators. Luckily for us, this residency involves a lot of work: during the project, the authors will write several stories in their mother tongue, including Dutch, English, Spanish and Serbian this year. Next, the translators will take over and will translate the texts into Dutch, English and German, resulting in a total of fifty stories. Multilingual at its core, the project ensures that a close-knit group is formed in which the artists can exchange ideas, while at the same time the many languages themselves

become a subject of discussion.

whole group? Will writing about their double role as artist and audience bridge a gap between people joining the festivals as guests and people performing at the festival?

During the festival, we’re letting this whole bunch of writers and translators roam freely, processing their experiences in the group and at the festival in their stories, write and think about new musical and literary discoveries and about their collaborations. Crossing Border thus becomes a playground for experimentation: what kind of texts emerge when their creators find themselves in a creative pressure cooker? What does it mean to share this experience and exhaustion with a

On the last evening, there will be a joint reading with all participants of The Chronicles. Make sure to check our website to read their stories, especially written and translated for the occasion!

Ongoing activity online > Chronicles Live: 7 November > Koninklijke Schouwburg

Ibe Rossel

Y UA

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RK BO

W E

IĆ

N SO IL

IM AN

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THE FIVE COLLABORATIONS

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Mikayla Vieira Ribeiro

Filip Grujić

Lena van Tijen

Clyo Mendoza

Isa Davids

Christine Koopmann

Caragh Maxwell

Eva Leek

Ibe Rossel & Mikayla Vieira Ribeiro Ibe Rossel (1999) is a Flemish writer who studied English Literature in Amsterdam. She made her debut in 2021 with the collection of essays Shakespeare kent me beter dan mijn lief. In it, she explores the timeless lessons that literary classics offer the contemporary reader. In her second book, Bloedspiegel (2026), she examines male violence through iconic conflicts between iconic brothers. She’s a regular panel member on the literary talk show Uitgelezen. During the festival, Ibe’s stories will be translated into Dutch by Mikayla Vieira Ribeiro. Mikayla Vieira Ribeiro is a writer, researcher and translator born and

raised in Curaçao. Working across Papiamentu, Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish into English, she primarily translates the Caribbean. She is currently a PhD researcher at the University of Amsterdam focused on archipelagic listening in the (Dutch) Caribbean. Her recent projects include creating the Awa Archives (ABCSSS water poetics) with Simia Literario, and translating Ini Statia's poetry collection Na rant di mi isla / At the Edge of My Island. Her work has been supported by Wintertuin’s Future Language Innovation program, Read My World, and Expertisecentrum Literaire Vertalen (ELV), and her writing appears in Archipelagos, Islands in Between, De Revisor, and PREE. During the festival, she will translate Ibe’s stories into English.

Filip Grujić & Lena van Tijen Filip Grujić is a writer, playwright and film director from Belgrade, where he teaches at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts. His third novel And Then, All Over Again (2023) has been translated into Dutch by Lena van Tijen as En dan opnieuw, vanaf het begin. His plays have earned him the Mihiz Award and two Sterija Awards and have been translated, performed and studied internationally. Following its world premiere at Copenhagen's CPH:DOX, his feature documentary Yugo Goes to America won the Audience Award for Best European Documentary at Belgrade's Beldocs festival and is currently traveling around the world. During Crossing Border, Filip’s stories will be translated into Dutch by Lena van Tijen.

Lena van Tijen (Amsterdam, 1993) is a writer, literary translator

(Croatian/Serbian/Bosnian–Dutch), and events coordinator at Donner Bookshop in Rotterdam. Her work has appeared in De Gids, Metropolis M, Mister Motley and De Groene Amsterdammer. As a translator, she has translated work by, among others, Radmila Petrović, Slavenka Drakulić, and Filip Grujić into Dutch. She is also an editor of Terras, a journal of international literature. She is currently working on her debut novel. During the festival, she will translate Filip’s stories into Dutch.

Clyo Mendoza & Gwyn Bouwman Clyo Mendoza (Oaxaca, 1993) is a writer. She is the author of the poetry

collections Anamnesis (2016) and Silencio (2018), which received the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz International Poetry Prize in 2017; and of the novel Furia (2021), winner of the 2022 Amazon First Novel Award. She has received fellowships from Mexico’s National Fund for Culture and the Arts (FONCA) in both Poetry and Novel, and was a resident fellow at the Antonio Gala Foundation in Córdoba, Spain. During the festival, Clyo’s stories will be translated into Dutch by Gwyn Bouwman.

Gwyn Bouwman is a literary translator from Spanish into Dutch and

a poet/writer. She is Dutch and has also been a Brussels resident for many years. During her student years, she spent time in Argentina and Chile, where her love of Latin American literature began. She trained in literary translation and creative writing and has published her work in literary magazines and online. She is fascinated by other cities, languages and cultures, and by the different ways in which emotions and political realities are experienced within them. She is particularly drawn to contemporary work that is anecdotal, quirky, contemplative or absurdist.

Isa Davids & Christine Koopmann Isa Davids (1994) studied History and International Relations. She

interned as a political editor in New York City. Currently she is a freelance journalist and writes for the book department of the Dutch newspaper NRC. Her other publications have appeared in de Volkskrant,

NEWS, PROGRAMME & TICKETS: CROSSINGBORDER.NL

Gwyn Bouwman

Trouw and Vrij Nederland. She lives in Amsterdam. Her debut short story collection is titled Yenta. This work comprises nine stories that tell the history of a Jewish American family. These stories alternate with the memoirs of a journalist who tries to save his marriage by accepting a foreign correspondent position in Jerusalem. During the festival, Isa’s Chronicles stories will be translated into German by Christine Koopmann. Christine Koopmann (1995) studied Interdisciplinary Dutch Studies,

focusing on Literary Translation and Cultural Transfer, at the University of Münster. Since 2021, she has been translating from Dutch into German, while also working for a literary agency in Amsterdam where she primarily promotes German literature in the Netherlands and Flanders. This dual role gives her a firm grasp of the book markets in both language areas, allowing her to navigate and connect both literary landscapes. During the festival, she will translate Isa’s stories into German.

Caragh Maxwell & Eva Leek Caragh Maxwell is a writer living in Sligo, Ireland. Her writing focuses

on otherness, womanhood, intergenerational trauma, and place. Sugartown, her debut novel, was published by Oneworld in 2025. The Dutch translation by Lisette van Eijk was published in 2026. Sugartown was shortlisted for Newcomer of The Year at the 2025 An Post Irish Book Awards. It has also been shortlisted for the 2026 New Adult Book Prize. During the festival, Caragh’s stories will be translated into Dutch by Eva Leek.

Eva Leek discovered her passion for translation while studying English

Language and Culture at the University of Amsterdam. During the MA Literary Translation at the University of Utrecht that followed, she started her job as translation coordinator for the Writers Unlimited International Literature Festival. Since then, she has also worked for Read My World and het Grote Gebeuren. Last summer she was selected to take part in the 'professionalization course' hosted by the ELV. She has since acquired a taste for Irish literature and can't wait to translate her first novel. During the festival, she will translate Caragh’s stories into Dutch.

CROSSING BORDER FESTIVAL

3 – 8 NOVEMBER 2025 THE HAGUE

FESTIVAL EVENING 6 NOVEMBER 19:00 – 23:30 ROYAL THEATRE

Édouard Louis Catherine Lacey In his later books, such as History of Violence and Who Killed My Father, he explores the relationship between personal experience and broader social and political structures, such as class, violence, and inequality. Louis is considered one of the most important and politically engaged voices of his generation. His work is

strongly autobiographical and combines literature with sociological analysis and political commitment. At Crossing Border, Édouard Louis will be in conversation about his ambitious manifesto for a new literature: what can we do with literature? The Dutch translation Wat te doen met de literatuur? (tr: Dirk Zijlstra) will be published just in time for the festival.

The book is a challenging journey through the author’s personal literary history. Louis examines the traditional tensions between different forms of literature and questions when the spoken and written word transcend the personal. In a series of incisive interviews, Édouard Louis presents a grand manifesto for a new literature – contemporary, lyrical, and revolutionary.

Catherine Lacey (US), one of America’s most daring and original writers, will be interviewed about her latest book Biography of X. Lacey’s work has received numerous awards. She has published in The New York Times, The Paris Review, and The Atlantic. She lives in Mexico City.

of the woman she idolized, yet barely knew. But X, renowned for assuming countless identities, turns out to be even more elusive than she had imagined. Against the backdrop of an alternative history of the US, Lucca delves into her wife’s past, and fact and fiction begin to blur.

When X, a groundbreaking artist, drops dead in her office, her widow C.M. Lucca throws herself into writing a biography

The book has been translated into Dutch by Lydia Meeder, Gerda Baardman and Gretske de Haan: Biografie van X.

Zoh Amba

Jaap Robben

French writer and sociologist. Born Eddy Bellegueule, he grew up in a poor working-class environment in northern France, an experience that lies at the heart of his work. He gained international recognition with his autobiographical debut The End of Eddy (2014), in which he writes about his childhood, his homosexuality, and the social exclusion and poverty in which he was raised.

Édouard Louis (1992) is a

An album of tough and soulful songs that feel like a pure transmission from the heart: that’s Eyes Full, Zoh Amba’s brand-new debut album. It’s distinctly, instinctively tied to Amba's hometown of Kingsport, Tennessee and the rediscovery of their first instrument, the guitar. The album courses with a type of muddy, loose acoustic blues, punctuated with bursts of feedback-laden electric guitar and sweet burnishes of Appalachian folk. It's a remarkable turn for an artist who has already become one of the most exciting saxophonists to emerge from NYC’s avant-garde scene.

Though Amba had long believed that pure instrumental music could help souls, and that transcendence could be reached without language, words eventually pushed their way in. While playing saxophone, they often felt as though they were being carried heavenward: their body burning, tears rising, the music opening a direct line to God. But alongside that ecstasy came flashes of darker childhood memories. The guitar became a way to face those visions directly, to hold them at eye level rather than flee. They sang their way through it, and back to Kingsport.

The songs on Eyes Full sound moonshine-drunk, Amba’s voice snarling and fiery, their guitar slowing then gathering speed like a steam train edging off the tracks. They veer suddenly between abrasion and gentleness. One moment they’re all teeth, the next, they go soft and still. Every song circles the idea of seeing and being seen. The record looks closely at the lives of working-class folk in small towns who bust their asses off while trying to find any salvation they can. “I hope these songs touch people’s hearts,” Amba says. “They’re about people who really need to be seen and heard.”

Like many Polish people, Lukasz has spent years working in the Netherlands and Germany. He regularly returns home and keeps in touch through messages. Then, suddenly, his daughter stops hearing from him. When a stranger contacts her to say he has Lukasz's coat, she decides to travel to Germany. What follows is a whirlwind search. A novel that reads like a detective story, yet without a murder and without a culprit. A reconstruction of a life through the eyes of everyone who crossed paths with Lukasz. Jaap Robben’s brand-new novel De laatste namen van Lukasz is a contemporary European epic, portraying a continent as a blended family, where language and origin determine who is seen and who remains invisible. Jaap Robben already won

over booksellers, readers and critics alike with his debut novel Birk, following up with Summer Brother, which was longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2021 and received widespread acclaim. Dutch spoken event.

LITERATURE & MUSIC

CROSSING BORDER FESTIVAL

3 – 8 NOVEMBER 2025 THE HAGUE

FESTIVAL EVENING 6 NOVEMBER 19:00 – 23:30 ROYAL THEATRE

Barbi Marković anaiis If you’re in a football

and a mythical Yugoslavia that – despite the impending catastrophe – still believes football can make a difference. The protagonist, Barbi, grows up in the late 1980s in what was then Yugoslavia. Her father regularly takes her to the football stadium, a world where competition prevails over solidarity and the young football talent Piksi is worshipped like a saint. Her father, once a football legend himself, hopes his daughter will follow in his footsteps, but Barbi is more interested in writing. When Yugoslavia loses to Argentina on penalties during the 1990 World Cup, on the eve of the Yugoslav Wars, the entire country falls into deep mourning: even their last shared passion seems to have been lost.

stadium and you notice the shouting getting louder and louder, listen carefully to what is being shouted. Make sure you’re the first to reach the exit. First out of the stadium, then out of the country – before the rush begins. The world cannot be saved. Barbi Marković (1980) was born

in Serbia. She studied German literature in Belgrade and Vienna, where she still lives. Since her debut Ausgehen in 2009, she has received numerous literary awards, including the Leipzig Book Fair Prize for her novel Minihorror, which was published in 2025. Her latest book The Last Team (Het laatste elftal, translated into Dutch by Lotte Lentes) is a witty football novel, set against the backdrop of the war in Yugoslavia. It won the award for Best Football Book of the Year in Germany, making Marković the first female author to receive the prize. In The Last Team, Barbi Marković weaves together, in a virtuoso play with the language of sports commentators, memories of football, her absent father,

Born in Toulouse, raised between Dublin, Dakar and Oakland, and now rooted in London, anaiis’ footholds have shaped a perspective founded in movement and transformation. After her debut single Nina in 2018, she released this is no longer a dream in 2021. She shared the stage with Erykah Badu and Nick Hakim, and headlined a sold-out Barbican show. From a young age, anaiis was drawn to voice as a vessel for feeling, inspired by artists like Ella Fitzgerald. This fascination

Adania Roufaida Shibli

Anaiis’ latest album Devotion & The Black Divine is soothing and spine-chilling at once, imbued with key messages of self-love.

S.A. Cosby

Boundary-pushing, poetic, and activist – Roufaida is an artist whose work reflects her evolving perspective and commitment to exploring new ideas. Drawing from her North-African heritage, she combines unconventional melodies with metaphorical songwriting shaped by Arabic poetry and the realities of today’s world.

Adania Shibli (1974) was

born in Palestine. She holds a PhD from the University of East London and is the author of three novels originally published in Arabic. She lives and works between Berlin and Jerusalem. Her new book Misleiding will be published in the festival week.

Influenced by innovative artists like Rosalía, Björk, and Arooj Aftab, Dutch-Moroccan Roufaida honors multiple traditions while creatively expanding upon them. Her breakthrough came with the release of the Roufaida EP in 2023, featuring standout tracks like “Don’t Bend”, showcasing the deep tones of the Moroccan guembri, and “Kalimat”, inspired by a poem by Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani.

After decades of colonisation, military occupation and the failed peace initiatives of the 1990s, a young woman and a young man are violently pushed further and further to the margins of society. No names, places or dates are given; only the changing seasons bear witness to lives being shattered and torn apart, and to dreams slowly slipping away. In her razor-sharp, minimalist prose, Adania Shibli explores in Misleiding the constant threat of subjugation, arrest and dispossession, as well as the Israeli authorities’ relentless efforts to make Palestinians strangers in their own land. The book has been translated into Dutch by Nijhofflaureate Djûke Poppinga.

grew into a lineage shaped by the work of Black thinkers and artists: bell hooks (whose influence anaiis acknowledges by styling her own name in lowercase), Nina Simone, Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Alice Walker and Ousmane Sembène. These influences shaped anaiis’ conviction to create with freedom and curiosity.

The EP gained international airplay and brought her to stages across the Benelux, Germany, and Morocco. Praised for its distinctive sound, the EP earned two nominations for the prestigious Edison Awards.

NEWS, PROGRAMME & TICKETS: CROSSINGBORDER.NL

S.A. Cosby, from southeastern Virginia (USA), has emerged as one of the leading new voices in Southern crime noir. His stories unfold not in the big city, but in rural America: among remote towns, deserted back roads, and the swamplands of the American South.

His books have been showered with praise and awards, including in the Netherlands. My Darkest Prayer is his debut thriller from 2018, which is being re-released internationally, after its initial first publication by a small press. The book will be presented alongside the chilling Southern Gothic novel King of Ashes from 2025. Mijn duistere gebed and Koninkrijk van as have been translated into Dutch by Henk Moerdijk.

CROSSING BORDER FESTIVAL

3 – 8 NOVEMBER 2025 THE HAGUE

FESTIVAL EVENING 6 NOVEMBER 19:00 – 23:30 ROYAL THEATRE

It is September 1974. Two men meet by

into the looking-glass world of Cinecittà,

chance in Venice. One is a young English

the studio where Casanova’s Venice will be

artist, in panicked flight from London.

ingeniously assembled. Then in the spring,

The other is Danilo Donati, the magician

the lovers move together to the set of Salò,

of Italian cinema, the designer responsible

Pasolini’s horrifying fable of fascism.

for realising the spectacular visions of

But Nicholas has a secret, and in this

Fellini and Pasolini.

world of constant illusion, his real nature

Olivia Laing is an internationally acclaimed writer.

They’re the author of eight books, including The Lonely City, Everybody and the Sunday Times number one bestseller, The Garden Against Time. They are a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Arts. At Crossing Border, they will talk about their latest novel The Silver Book.

passes unseen. Amidst the rising tensions Donati is in Venice to produce sketches for

of Italy’s "Years of Lead", he acts as an

Fellini’s Casanova. A young – and beautiful

accelerant, setting in motion a tragedy

– apprentice is just what he needs.

he didn’t intend …

60 JAAR Privé-domein

Sixty years ago, in 1966,

Nicolien Mizee (1965) wrote

novels, columns, a children's book and a bird book. She broke through with the thriller Moord op de Moestuin (2000). In recent years, she has received critical acclaim for her autobiographical series Faxen aan Ger, for which she was awarded the Henriette Roland Holst Prize.

Privé-domein was launched, creating a home for the most personal forms of literary writing: letters, diaries and memoirs. The series has since grown into a much-loved institution in the literary landscape. Every reason, then, to celebrate this year! On the first main festival evening, Crossing Border presents a special

Niña Weijers (1987) is the author

of the novels De consequenties (2014) and Kamers antikamers (2019). In 2022, her collection of essays Zelf doen was published, followed by the book-length essay Cassandra (2023). She is a regular contributor to De Groene Amsterdammer and is currently working on a new novel.

Marieke Ornelis (1999) is

a dramaturg, theatre-maker and writer. Her work has been published in various literary magazines, she won the Lowlands Writing Competition in 2025, and she is currently working on her debut novel Grafroof, which will be published by De Arbeiderspers.

The duo KAFKA provides the evening with musical adventures.

tribute to Privé-domein at the Spiegeltent.

Gerbrand Bakker Iduna Paalman

Marieke Ornelis

Niña Weijers

first book in the series, which made a lasting impression on her: Mary McCarthy, Herinneringen aan mijn roomse jeugd (tr: Nini Brunt). Niña Weijers discusses the brand-new Privé-domein edition by Annie Ernaux, Het werkelijke leven (tr: Rokus Hofstede). Marieke Ornelis talks about the moving diary of Mary MacLane, Ik wacht op de komst van de duivel (tr: Auke Leistra). Iduna Paalman hosts the evening and interviews Gerbrand Bakker, who drew on memories of his mother in Moeder, na vader and Aan mij heb je niks.

the autobiographical series

In collaboration with Uitgeverij De Arbeiderspers

Nicolien Mizee

Nicolien Mizee talks about the

Gerbrand Bakker (1962)

achieved international recognition as a writer with his novel Boven is het stil. His books Jasper en zijn knecht (2016), Knecht, alleen (2020), Moeder, na vader (2023) and Aan mij heb je niks (2025) were published as part of the Privé-domein series. His most recent book is Boedel.

KAFKA

Iduna Paalman (1991) made her

debut in 2019 with the poetry collection De grom uit de hond halen (Poëziedebuutprijs). In 2022, her second poetry collection, Bewijs van bewaring (J.C. Bloemprijs), was published. She writes reviews for, among others, De Groene Amsterdammer and NRC.

He sweeps Nicholas to Rome,

The Silver Book

Olivia Laing

KAFKA With their dreamy

songs, layered productions and powerful vocals, songwriters Frank and Dafne have made their way onto radio playlists with “Goldfish” and “Shimmering Light”. Following previous tours, including in Japan, KAFKA brings a distinctive sound that is both captivating and innovative.

LITERATURE & MUSIC

CROSSING BORDER FESTIVAL

3 – 8 NOVEMBER 2025 THE HAGUE

FESTIVAL EVENING 6 NOVEMBER 19:00 – 23:30 ROYAL THEATRE

Frans Kalf

My father was a gardener.

Georgi Gospodinov

Now he is a garden.

Georgi Gospodinov is a Bulgarian writer and one of the most

How do you still find the words to express what truly matters? Meet Frans Kalf, a cynically cheerful connoisseur of life – half Amsterdammer, half Ghent native. With catchy songs and sharp, observant lyrics, he takes you, under the approving gaze of Shaffy and Brel, into his bittersweet little world, where there is room for both a broken heart and a roaring laugh. Not what you expect, yet better than you imagined.

This year, he released his debut single Terwijl Je Voor Me Stond, a song that immediately sketches the contours of Frans Kalf's musical identity, where chanson intertwines with indie and folk. Meanwhile, the newly crowned Sound Track laureate has spent the past year effortlessly winning over audiences and stages of all kinds. In 2026, he will tour alongside Dressed Like Boys, Kaat Van Stralen and Johannes Is Zijn Naam, among others.

A man sits by his father's bedside and reports radically and gently until a final winter morning. His father was one of that generation of tragic smokers born right after World War II in Bulgaria, who clung to the snorkels of their cigarettes. A rebel without a cause who knew how to fail with heroic self-deprecation. The garden he created out of a barren village yard first saved him, then killed him. It remains his living legacy: peonies and potatoes, roses and cherry trees – and endless stories. But without him, his son's past, with all its afternoons, begins to quietly crack. Because the end of our fathers is the end of a world.

Sally Hayden Flora Hibberd In This is Also a Love Story, Irish writer Sally Hayden introduces us to a couple separated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and a mother in northeast Nigeria who risks everything to save her daughter from forced marriage to Boko Haram militants. We meet a group of Syrian women searching tirelessly for their missing spouses and children, while launching a call for justice, and learn about letters from the bereaved to the dead, still being written over a decade after the tsunami that devastated Japan.

Modern Woman, the London

art-rock outfit fronted by primary songwriter Sophie Harris, released their anticipated debut album Johnny’s Dreamworld in May this year. It represents the culmination of Modern Woman’s journey from Harris’s early, intimate songwriting project into a full-bodied band capable of folding post-punk, avant-garde, and folk traditions into a live force of dynamic originality. At its heart, the record explores the strange poetry buried within the ordinary. Harris’s lyrics, steeped in literary detail and filmic atmosphere, draw from a fascination with the dark underbelly of the everyday and the contradictions of womanhood.

Modern Woman’s sound emerged from years of creative refinement. The band coalesced when Harris met violinist and composer David Denyer, who brought a background in experimental composition and textural sound work. Joined by Juan Brint-Gutiérrez on bass and saxophone and Adam Blackhurst on drums, the group forged a style that values the contrasting harsh edges of folk lyricism and noise that collides with melody. Working with producer Joel Burton (Naima Bock, Katy J Pearson, Vanishing Twin), they found a live immediacy that channels the raw intensity of their performances into a sound that is both rich and unpredictable.

Modern Woman

In stories that crisscross the globe, from Uganda to Lebanon, Rwanda to Iraq, Hayden asks us: what if news was recounted through the prism of the actions people take for those they love? Would it become harder to dehumanise those who seem different to us?

prominent European authors of our time. At the festival, he will be interviewed about his latest novel Death and the Gardener, which has been translated into Dutch by Hellen Kooijman, as De dood en de tuinman.

This is Also a Love Story dares us to recognise how connection, self-sacrifice and love can be found in even the most difficult of times, and – as a result – to question what might be needed to create a better world.

Like a textile artist, Flora Hibberd weaves layers of meaning into their music. The London-born, Paris-based musician’s debut album, Swirl, garnered critical attention. As likely to veer into guitar or synth-driven pop as to take up a 17th century traditional, Hibberd’s music presents a tapestry of everyday life shot through with cosmic signs. It is a walk in a strangely familiar neighbourhood, revealing the mystic undertones of everyday life.

Sally Hayden is an award-winning journalist, photographer and author. She is an international correspondent for The Irish Times and has reported all over the world for an array of outlets, including CNN International, TIME, the BBC, The New York Times and Al Jazeera.

Hot on the heels of Swirl comes Mammoth, which gets weirder. Produced by Ben Lanz (Beirut, The National) between a Basque mountain and the Paris suburbs, the album is populated with ghosts of history and prehistory that roam the present, to stare into the future with a clear and unblinking eye. Echoes of Lanz’s trombone and longtime collaborator Victor Claass’ feverish guitar, and whispers of familiar voices drift down from the hill, the swirling mists of an album that is at once more energetically pop, and more odd and disquieting than what came before.

NEWS, PROGRAMME & TICKETS: CROSSINGBORDER.NL

CROSSING BORDER FESTIVAL

3 – 8 NOVEMBER 2025 THE HAGUE

DAY PROGRAMME 7 NOVEMBER

Oksana Atef Anna Zaboezjko Abu Enquist

Saif

Anna Enquist (1945) will be in

conversation about her new novel Het einde van Erna Ankersmit. Novels such as The Masterpiece, The Secret and Counterpoint have earned Anna Enquist a wide and international readership. Millions of copies of her work have been sold worldwide. The End of Erna Ankersmit is her tenth novel.

the Palestinian past and present, and about staying or leaving. Around Saliem, the stories of his old friends unfold: some choose resistance, others pursue careers in the media machine Gaza has become, or dream of life abroad. Some are not afraid to use violence in the name of faith. Their stories transport us from literary evenings in cafés to prisons, from underground tunnels to grassroots protest movements.

Atef Abu Saif will be in

conversation at Crossing Border about his novel A suspended life: a compelling family story set in the heart of Gaza City, with all its political and social contradictions. One morning, when Na’iem opens his copy shop in Gaza, where he is often asked to print posters of young "martyrs", he is killed by a bullet. His son, Saliem, who has returned from abroad, finds himself in a heated debate with his cousin about whether Na’iem is a hero or a victim of an Israeli sniper, as people in the street claim. The question sparks a profound discussion about heroism and the myths surrounding it, about

Oksana Zaboezjko (Lutsk,

1960) is one of Ukraine’s most prominent contemporary writers. She studied philosophy in Kyiv and earned her PhD with a dissertation on the aesthetics of lyric poetry. When Russian missiles struck her home city of Kyiv in 2022, she wrote the essay The Longest Journey about the Russo-Ukrainian war. Her literary work, including the short story collection Sister, Sister (2022), has been translated worldwide. At Crossing Border, she will discuss her latest novel, The Museum of Abandoned Secrets. Museum van verlaten geheimen has been translated into Dutch by Marina Snoek and Jos Moortgat.

11:00 > Borderkitchen Kerkstraat 13

R.F. Kuang Rebecca F. Kuang will come to Crossing Border for an interview about her new book Taipei Story. It has recently been published in Dutch as Mijn zomer in Taipei, translated by Hi-en Montijn. Rebecca F. Kuang is the award-winning author of the international bestsellers Babel, Katabasis, and Yellowface. For more information, see page 3.

13:00 > Koninklijke Schouwburg, The Raven

Atef Abu Saif is a historian and former Palestinian Minister of Culture. He writes novels, plays, non-fiction, and diaries. His novel A suspended life (2014) was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction and has now been translated into Dutch by Richard van Leeuwen, as Uitgesteld leven.

It must be a misunderstanding when, on a dark grey afternoon, a home care worker rings the doorbell of the elderly and cantankerous Erna Ankersmit. She neither has nor wants home care. Yet, unwilling to send her away into a hailstorm, the oncecelebrated writer, who is tirelessly working on a new novel, reluctantly invites Vronie, the care worker and mother of a family with growing children, inside.

Television producer Daryna accidentally discovers a photograph from the 1940s showing a woman in uniform among four members of the Ukrainian partisan army. Her investigation into the story behind the photograph develops into a gripping panorama spanning more than sixty years of Ukrainian history. Along the way, Daryna discovers that many documents have disappeared from the archives. But in the present day, too, it seems that much is being swept under the rug. Was the death of her artist friend really an accident? And what happened to her missing paintings?

Secrets – facts erased from official histories, such as falsified election results and deals with the Kremlin – shape the history of the country. Oksana Zaboezjko spares no one, criticising both the decades of Russian rule and the subsequent period of independence, in which machismo, cynicism and corruption continue to thrive.

This half-hearted gesture marks the beginning of a friendship that gradually reveals deeper layers, culminating in a joint walking journey along Hadrian’s Wall in England. A journey that brings everything into sharper focus, including Erna’s past and her relationship with her late husband. Dutch spoken event.

The Museum of Abandoned Secrets is a family saga with all the hallmarks of a detective story, but at the same time a moving and passionate love story that raises the question: is it wise to unearth the abandoned secrets of history, or might it be better to let them rest?

13:00 > Red Eyed Fly, Spiegeltent, Lange Voorhout 74

13:00 > Borderkitchen, Kerkstraat 13

LITERATURE & MUSIC

CROSSING BORDER FESTIVAL

3 – 8 NOVEMBER 2025 THE HAGUE

DAY PROGRAMME 7 NOVEMBER

Nathacha Appanah A young woman runs through the house trying to escape her partner. From a distance it looks almost like a game: they dodge each other, knocking over chairs. She flees into the street. He follows her in his car, accelerating, stopping, then accelerating again. Eventually, she gets in voluntarily. If I obey, perhaps I'll have another chance, she thinks. “That woman,” Nathacha Appanah writes, “is me.” Nathacha Appanah’s powerful new book La nuit au coeur is a searing examination of femicide. The book has been translated into Dutch by Nathalie Tabury as De nacht in het hart. It

reconstructs the shattered lives of three women, three victims of femicide. One of those stories is Appanah’s own: that of a “potential femicide”, had she not managed to escape her abusive partner just in time. The author examines family structures, social taboos, and the ways the media and society respond to violence against women. With precision and clarity, she exposes the mechanisms of patriarchal violence at every level of society, from the cultural elite to workingclass communities. Balancing anger and shame, she explores the many forms of hidden violence that emerge when love gives way to darkness.

Nathacha Appanah (1973) is a

French journalist and novelist, born and raised in Mauritius. She moved to France in 1998 and has published thirteen books since 2003. De nacht in het hart became an extraordinary bestseller in France and earned her some of the country's most prestigious literary honours, including the Prix Femina, the Prix Renaudot des Lycéens, and the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens. The book also received the Dutch Prix Goncourt des Lycéens des Pays-Bas. 11:00 > Red Eyed Fly, Spiegeltent, Lange Voorhout 74

The wait is over! The European Literature Prize goes to: writer Cécile Wajsbrot, translator Josephine Rijnaarts and the book of the hour

About the book – Nevermore In Nevermore, the protagonist, a translator, is working on the translation of “Time passes”, the middle section of Virginia Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse.

Heym. She is also a journalist, writing for literary magazines such as Autrement, Les Nouvelles littéraires and Le Magazine littéraire.

Whilst the reader is carried along by Woolf’s language and the translator’s craft of pondering, testing and tasting, they also discover that the translator is mourning the death of her friend, and is trying to keep her pain at bay through intellectual detachment. Her thoughts on “Time Passes” intertwine with stories and places of destruction and restoration, such as the landscape around Chernobyl, New York’s High Line and the history of Dresden. Wajsbrot creates a wide-ranging novel with a rich tapestry of themes and landscapes.

Get a tiny preview of the jury report:

“Nevermore is a work with a small mystery at its heart, a gentle tale of pain, interwoven with a mosaic of destruction, re-evaluation and reconstruction. Wajsbrot wrote a very European, worldly novel, in times when destruction, mourning and ruin are the order of the day and yet we continue to repeat history – Nevermore, never again? […] From a translation

perspective, Nevermore is a work of art in its own right, on top of the unique work of art that the novel itself already is. Josephine Rijnaarts faced the complex task of making the process of translating an English classic into French conceivable and tangible in Dutch. She has succeeded very convincingly. If there is one novel that deserves this prize, it is Nevermore.”

Jury members:

Writer Lisa Weeda (chair), translators Adri Boon and Jelle Noorman, booksellers Edith Vroon (Boekhandel Van Rossum) and Mira Taks (Boekhandel Roelants) and literary critics and writers Michel Krielaars (NRC) and Christiaan Weijts (De Groene Amsterdammer).

About the translator Josephine Rijnaarts is best known for her translations from German but has also been translating from French – her first language at university – since 2004. Rijnaarts is an excellent translator who received the Letterenfonds Translation Prize in 2021 for ‘virtuoso translational courage, masterful command of Dutch and stylistic versatility’. She has been nominated on several occasions for the European Literature Prize and the Filter Translation Prize.

Josephine Rijnaarts

About the author Cécile Wajsbrot (1954) is French and divides her time between Paris and Berlin. She has written twenty novels and also works as a literary translator. Her family fled from Poland to France in the 1930s. During the war, members

of her family were murdered in Auschwitz. In 2016, she received the Prix de l’Académie de Berlin. Wajsbrot has translated books from English and German into French, including works by Virginia Woolf, Violet Trefusis and Stefan

The European Literature Prize is awarded to the best contemporary European novel published in Dutch translation in the previous year. Both the author and the translator of the winning novel receive €10.000 in prize money. The prize will be awarded for the sixteenth time this year.

the academic-cultural platform SPUI25, weekly magazine De Groene Amsterdammer and Athenaeum | Scheltema bookshop. The prize is made possible with funding from the Dutch Foundation for Literature, the Lira Foundation and the De Lancey Foundation.

The prize is an initiative of the Dutch Foundation for Literature,

16:30 > Red Eyed Fly, Spiegeltent, Lange Voorhout 74

NEWS, PROGRAMME & TICKETS: CROSSINGBORDER.NL

Nevermore was published by Oevers.

CROSSING BORDER FESTIVAL

3 – 8 NOVEMBER 2025 THE HAGUE

FESTIVAL EVENING 7 NOVEMBER 19:00 – 23:30 ROYAL THEATRE

aja monet

aja monet is a Surrealist

Blues Poet in the business of goosebumps and heart-guttelling truths. Her poems are harmolodic, vulnerable, and insurgent. As the youngest recipient of the Nuyorican Grand Slam Poetry title, she first cut her teeth in New York City’s Lower East Side poetry clubs and bars, honing her voice and craft on the storied stages of a burgeoning grassroots poetry movement.

She follows in the long legacy and tradition of poets organizing in social movements for change. Her collaborative spirit has seen her shape and shift culture alongside internationally renowned artists, scholars, activists, and organizers. Her debut poetry album, when the poems do what they do, was nominated for a Grammy Best Spoken Word Poetry Album in 2024. The album explores themes of resistance, love, and the inexhaustible quest for joy. aja’s first full collection of poems, my mother was a freedom fighter (2017), is a powerful tribute to women who embody freedom. Her most recent book of poems, inspired by several years living and organizing in South Florida, is called florida water (2025). During the festival, she will perform her new album the color of rain.

LYR LYR’s story stretches back to

2009 when Walters, an admirer of Armitage’s extensive body of written work, approached the poet’s publisher about the possibility of collaboration. The result was Walters setting Armitage’s poetry to music in his 2011 solo song "Redwoods". Realising that their two-part formula had potential to grow, Walters approached musical acquaintance Pearson, and his joining provided the impetus to create the genre-splicing "supergroup". Creating LYR Mk.1, Walters and Pearson provided Armitage with a Dictaphone and waited for over two years for the poet to return the machine with spoken verses,

fragments of work that had never found any other place to call home. When set to music, Call In The Crash Team came into existence. Whilst artistically successful, opening the door to greater possibility, the three-piece point to The Ultraviolet Age as the advanced stage of that possibility. Coming together with focused, blended labour to instrumentalise Armitage’s words and vocal delivery, opposing the tag of “spoken word project” or similar, the band ruminates instead on what aural breakthroughs could only be possible with a nonsinging vocalist, gifted singersong-writer and alchemistic musician-producer.

With Simon Armitage, Richard Walters & Patrick Pearson LYR are now a firmly established part of the contemporary music scene, with regular radio airplay across the networks, two critically acclaimed albums, Call In The Crash Team and The Ultraviolet Age, and over five million streams to their name. They have appeared at many major festivals over the past three years including Green Man and Blu Dot and completed UK tours and sell-out events at venues up and down the UK.

Tony Tulathimutte Tony Tulathimutte (US) will be

(“One of the most phenomenal novels I’ve read in the past decade.” – Jonathan Franzen).

in conversation about his latest novel Rejection. Written with the accomplished authority of a modern classic and the manic intensity of a loser's manifesto, Rejection radically redefines what it means to be rejected by lovers, friends, society and oneself.

His work appears in The Paris Review, n+1, The New York Times, and The New Yorker.

We see a tryhard male feminist's passionate allyship turn to furious nihilism as he realises that his feminism isn’t getting him laid and a young woman’s unrequited crush spirals into borderline obsession. As these characters pop up in each other’s dating apps and social media feeds, or meet in dimly lit bars and bedrooms, they reveal the ways that our delusions can warp our desire for connection. Translated into Dutch by Thijs and Arjaan van Nimwegen. Tony Tulathimutte is the author of the novel Private Citizens

Danish writer Olga Ravn will be in conversation about her latest book The Wax Child. The book

has been translated into Dutch by Michal van Zelm as Kind van was. Christenze Kruckow, an

unmarried noblewoman, is accused of witchcraft and imprisoned along with several other women. Rumor has it they are possessed by the devil, have performed unchristian rituals, and have spread illness and devastation. All of them are in mortal danger; the stake awaits. Poetic and daring, filled with incantations and based on true events.

Olga Ravn A gripping, subversive novel about human tyranny, darkness, rebellion, and witchcraft – told by a small wax doll. Olga Ravn is one of the most acclaimed contemporary Danish writers. Her novel The Employees was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2021.

LITERATURE & MUSIC

CROSSING BORDER FESTIVAL

3 – 8 NOVEMBER 2025 THE HAGUE

FESTIVAL EVENING 7 NOVEMBER 19:00 – 23:30 ROYAL THEATRE Derek Jarman Special: Modern Nature Harriet Clark

After being diagnosed with HIV in 1986, the British writer, artist and avant-garde filmmaker Derek Jarman (1942–1994) bought a plot of land with a wooden cottage on the Kent coast. He painted the wooden walls jet black, left the bright yellow window frames untouched, and, in the shadow of the Dungeness nuclear power station, he began creating his dream garden: a sea

Today, Jarmans’ garden is a place of pilgrimage for garden and art lovers from all over

White Rabbit presents

David Keenan & Michael Smith

David Keenan is a Scottish

writer and music journalist. He has been writing about music since the age of seventeen, his publications including England’s Hidden Reverse, a definitive history of the UK post-punk and industrial music scenes. Now, his new book Boyhood is out: Nine years after his brother has been abducted, Aaron Murray is facing the final days of his youth. His own journey of grief and recovery has been guided by an angel, The Precious Gift, who has blessed Aaron with redemptive, messianic powers. These have enabled him to see through the past and present, joining the dots between a vast array of characters; soldiers, burlesque dancers and East End gangsters, all tied up in each other's fate. A hymn to the resilience of youth, to the brave dreams of artists and lovers and a love letter to Glasgow – a city where magic happens.

Michael Smith (UK) is a writer

and filmmaker. The author of the cult-classic The Giro Playboy, his work has also featured in The Guardian, Esquire and Dazed & Confused. At Crossing Border, he will talk about his latest novel Strangers on the Shore: The flâneuring Michael at the centre of the book has moved down to the 'dogshit capital of the South Coast', started a family and opened a bar. He finds himself pouring wine in a "drinking town with a fishing problem", philosophising, procrastinating, morbidly obsessed with Aleister Crowley, who died in poverty in a BnB in this shabby seaside resort full of artistes and occult morris dancers. A moving book of transcendent beauty about fathers and songs and the pleasures of an introspective life: unashamedly romantic, whilst also angry about the dystopian Britain.

the world. Modern Nature has been brought into Dutch by Das Mag and translators Henny Corver and Nico Groen: Moderne natuur, a beautiful, spirited diary about a garden on the fringes of existence. Also available: Smiling in Slow Motion (Glimlach in slow motion), Jarman’s last diary before his death in 1994. Written from Prospect Cottage, a cluttered London flat and, ultimately, his hospital bed – contrarian, spirited reflections on art, gardening and radical protest.

8-year-old Suzanna pledges to visit, each week, the hilltop prison where her mother is serving a life sentence – becoming a secondary prisoner of her mother’s fate. That’s the premise of Harriet Clark’s debut novel The Hill, which she will present at the festival, and which is partly inspired by her own life, as her mother drove the getaway car in the deadly New York Brink's Robbery in 1981.

During Crossing Border, a number of friends and admirers of Jarman are going to share their thoughts and talk about his life and his garden: writer Olivia Laing, Belgian singer-songwriter Bent Van Looy and British gardener and writer Jonny Bruce, who is tending to the garden of Prospect Cottage now.

Dominique De Groen Dan English Dominique De Groen (1991) is

Born in a quiet town in Iowa, Dan English grew up chasing invisible things: codes in books, echoes in movies, half-sentences in songs. English found himself glued to the radio from an early age and, after picking up guitar at 10, language and sound conspired.

a Belgian poet, writer, and visual artist. In her work, she engages with themes like ecology, (anti-) capitalism, and internet and pop culture. She has written four poetry collections, including her debut Shop Girl (2017). Her first novel, Corpus Britney, came out in March 2026: Blla Goth, a B-movie horror actress who looks exactly like Britney Spears, vanishes into thin air after a day’s filming. Paranormal detective Malayney Melkzuur follows her trail across continents and through the centuries: a hallucinatory quest through pop culture, cyberspace horror and digital ruins, tracing the intertwined histories of capitalism right up to

its algorithmically driven present. Corpus Britney is a genre-bending novel full of doppelgängers, ghosts, visions, digressions and stories-within-stories – wildly associative and peppered with dark humour.

Following a move to New York City, Dan released his first album Fruit Boy in 2018 followed by 2020’s In Grace EP. His newest offering, Sky Record (June 2025), is his second fulllength album and continues to expand upon and probe the depths explored in his previous work.

The music is part confession, part séance, lush spells where the sacred and the stained trade places. Emotions arrive in disguises: tenderness (smoke), grief (rhythm), silence (a cathedral on the verge of collapse).

Cristina Rivera Garza & Amaranta Caballero Prado Cristina Rivera Garza is a Mexican writer and educator teaching Hispanic Studies at the University of Houston. She studied sociology at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and received a Ph.D. in Latin American history from the University of Houston.

Rivera Garza has won many literary awards, including the Anna Seghers International Prize and the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Memoir or Autobiography for her book Liliana’s Invincible Summer, which focuses on the femicide of her sister Liliana. She connects literary writing and scientific research and has coined the term “escrituras geológicas” (geological writings) for texts that, based on archives and documents, take up the experiences of other people, in particular those who have lived through violence. She proposes to focus on how to tell their story, so that it can be reimagined from a more critical perspective. © ,ANNETTE HORDISCHER

of flowers amidst the pebbles surrounding the house, Prospect Cottage. Not everything Jarman planted survived the fierce wind and the spray from the sea, but enough flourished nonetheless, and a garden of striking beauty emerged from the wasteland. In his diaries, Jarman documented his days in Dungeness. As his health continues to deteriorate, he describes how the garden he had longed for all his life is gradually coming into being. Reflections on the past decades intertwine with descriptions of the garden’s formation: his childhood in a conservative family, his time as a young gay man in 1960s London, and his unconventional career as an artist.

Cristina Rivera Garza will be introducing a writer from Mexico whose books have not yet been published in Dutch: Amaranta Caballero Prado

(1973) studied Graphic Design at the University of Guanajuato and completed a Master’s degree in Sociocultural Studies in Tijuana. She has published several collections of poetry, including the documentary and imaginative “Birds and Their Graphic Representation in the Scientific Work of Dr Alfredo Dugès” (2023), in which she revisits the work of Dugès, a French doctor whose life led him to settle in Guanajuato, to explore a region and a history that are disputed both yesterday and today. Drawing on scientific language and weaving in visual arts practices, Caballero Prado challenges a renegade scientist who, like her, knew how to observe and care for the animal life with which we coexist and on which we depend as a species.

Made possible with the support of the Instituto Cervantes as part of the Conferencia Spinoza 2026 featuring Cristina Rivera Garza (3 November, Leiden University), and by PLUG as part of the Cultural Translation Labs (4–5 November) organised by the Leiden University Centre for the Arts of Society (LUCAS).

NEWS, PROGRAMME & TICKETS: CROSSINGBORDER.NL

CROSSING BORDER FESTIVAL

3 – 8 NOVEMBER 2025 THE HAGUE

FESTIVAL EVENING 7 NOVEMBER 19:00 – 23:30 ROYAL THEATRE

Jeanette Winterson

Tobi Dahmen

Michaël Vandebril

Illustrator and graphic novelist Tobi Dahmen was born in Germany and has been living in the Netherlands for almost twenty years. After his award-winning graphic novel Fietsmod (2018), he has now published Columbusstraat: Een familiegeschiedenis 19351945 in Dutch, translated by Christine Braun. In this graphic novel, Dahmen documents his family's wartime past. Based on years of research into historical documents as well as testimonies from family members, it extends far beyond the personal. Through meticulous research and great sensitivity, Dahmen has created a work of significant historical relevance. Rolling Stone called it “the best and most important graphic novel of the year,” while Dutch newspaper NRC awarded it five stars, describing it as “extraordinary”.

With Naar Constantinopel, Michaël Vandebril has created a poetic road trip, combining words and images in collaboration with illustrator Bart Pluym. The book tells the story of two souls following the ancient Via Egnatia, a road that formed the lifeline of the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman Empires. Their path leads to the enigmatic Istanbul. Along rugged Albanian mountain passes, past hidden churches and minarets in North Macedonia, through the sweltering Greek and Turkish landscapes, a journey unfolds in which reality and imagination merge. Every line brings you closer to a destination that is as timeless as it is elusive. Earlier work by Vandebril includes the award-winning collection Het vertrek van Maeterlinck, New Romantics and Op de weg van Appia. He’s also a curator of Watou Arts Festival.

Jeanette Winterson takes the stage for a conversation about her

latest book, One Aladdin Two Lamps: With her execution looming, a woman is fighting for her life. Every night she tells a story. Every morning, she lives one more day. The book cracks open the legendary story of One Thousand and One Nights to show how its questions are still relevant to our lives today. Is love the most important thing in the world? What makes us happy? In her guise as Aladdin, Jeanette Winterson asks us to reread what we think we know and look again at how fiction works in our lives, giving us the courage to change our own narratives and alter endings we wish to subvert. As a young workingclass woman, with no obvious future beyond factory work or marriage, Winterson realised through the power of books that she could read herself as fiction as well as fact. Weaving together fiction, magic and memoir, this remarkable book is a tribute to the age-old tradition of storytelling and a radical step into the future – an invitation to look more closely at our own stories, and to imagine the world anew. The book has been translated into Dutch as Eén Aladdin, twee lampen by Arthur Wevers. Jeanette Winterson (1959)

grew up in Manchester. While studying English at the University of Oxford, she wrote her acclaimed debut novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, which won the Whitbread Award. Since then, she has established herself as one of Britain's most distinctive literary voices, publishing an impressive body of work that includes novels, short-story collections, children's books, and memoirs. In recognition of her contribution to literature, she was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2018.

Dry Cleaning

Abdelrahman ElGendy

Penelope Isles

Abdelrahman ElGendy studied

Dry Cleaning is coming to

Crossing Border! Earlier this year, Dry Cleaning, described as “the most important British guitar band of their generation”, released their new album Secret Love. The abstract lyrics of vocalist Florence Shaw are a defining feature of the band’s sound, along with the rich soundscape of early 80s US punk and hardcore coupled with stoner rock and motorik grooves.

The new album by Florence Shaw, Tom Dowse, Nick Buxton and Lewis Maynard was widely acclaimed and named Album of the Week/Month by, among others, The Sunday Times, The Observer, Record Collector, The Guardian, and MOJO. In a five-star review, MOJO even called the album “a surrealist masterpiece”.

Nonfiction Writing at the University of Pittsburgh and won the Samir Kassir Press Freedom Award. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, The Nation, and Guernica. At Crossing Border, he will present his gripping memoir Huna: Cairo, 2013. Two years after the revolution, hope for a free Egypt has faded. Following a military coup that resulted in unprecedented numbers of protester deaths, seventeenyear-old student Abdelrahman ElGendy doesn’t hesitate – he joins the demonstrations. His father, fearing for his son’s safety, accompanies him to a large protest. Within minutes, before they even step out of their car, they are overwhelmed by the police. Their lives will never be the same again. In his cell, ElGendy hears the Arabic protest song “Sawfa Nabqa Huna”, “We will remain here”, for the first time. But what, he wonders, do his fellow prisoners mean by “here”? Surely no one wants to

remain imprisoned. Over the next six years, as a political prisoner, he searches for the meaning of this “here,” this “Huna,” while he and his father are moved from cell to cell, until he ends up in Scorpion, Egypt’s most notorious prison. His body nearly gives out, his situation seems hopeless, but by writing down his testimony, he finds a way to endure. In this powerful debut, ElGendy offers not hope, but provocation. With Huna, he shows what it takes to persist when you are being erased, and what remains when all hope is gone. The Dutch version of Huna, translated by Hester Tollenaar, will be published during the festival.

Hailing from the Isle of Man via the uncomfortable shingles of Brighton beach, Penelope Isles resurface. Three years since their last show, life has quietly reshaped everything. Two solo records released into the world, new bands formed, old rhythms broken, and a magnetic pull back toward each other that couldn’t be ignored: Penny Isles’ sound remains unmistakable, fuzz-drenched, melody-rich, and charged with feeling.

Now expanded into a true three-piece with drummer Joe Taylor, Penelope Isles sound bigger, looser, and more alive than ever. Guitars shimmer and collide, harmonies ache and lift, drums crash like eerie weather rolling in fast off the coast. The Wolter siblings write songs like postcards from somewhere just out of reach. Brighton seafront flats, off-kilter restaurants, memories half-burned in the sun. Beautiful, fragile, and always on the edge of slipping away.

LITERATURE & MUSIC

CROSSING BORDER FESTIVAL

3 – 8 NOVEMBER 2025 THE HAGUE

CROSSING BORDER KIDS 8 NOVEMBER 10:00 – 16:00 THEATER DE VAILLANT A LOST ROBOT, A MYSTERY SOLVING HEDGEHOG, A LAME DUCK, A BLIND HEN, A RUNAWAY GIRL IN 50'S ITALY AND MIGRATIONS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD During the Crossing Border Kids programme, you’ll have the opportunity to meet a varied line-up of authors and illustrators of children’s literature as well as their creations. During the festival, they’ll showcase the best artistic and literary quality in books intended for all age groups from pre-readers to early readers, middle-grade and teenagers. You can expect hands-on workshops, interviews on the creative and artistic process behind the books and of course story time with the authors

themselves. All workshops will take place in Dutch and in the mother tongue of the author or illustrator – Spanish, English, German, Turkish, French or Italian. As sharing languages and stories is what connects us all, weaving a spiderweb of stories together with our children can be a seed for compassion, kindness and understanding in the world. And what better place to do so than with this selection of artists passionate about their work?

Joe Todd-Stanton

Tina De Gendt

Joe Todd-Stanton grew up in Brighton, England, and was taught to

Tina De Gendt is a historian specializing in migration and urban

Flash News This year, we will be introducing the Little Ravens Book Club open to 9+ independent readers. The participants will get to meet the author during the festival, get the chance to ask them questions, attend the full programme and get a free ticket (+1 accompanying adult) to the festival. Sign-in will open in September via our social media channels. Limited spots available. Stay tuned.

draw by his mother. He then went on to study illustration in Bristol. His first book The Secret of Black Rock won the 2018 Waterstones Children’s Book Prize and in 2024 he won the Kate Greenaway readers’ choice award for his book The Comet. He is well known for his beautifully detailed picture books and graphic novels. His “Brownstone mythical collection series” follow legendary stories of fearless fighters and unlikely heroes through history and ancient civilizations. At Crossing Border Kids, he will present his book The lost robot, followed by an interactive workshop. (ENGLISH/

history. From 2018 to 2023, she served as the in-house historian for STAM (Ghent’s city museum) and toured the city’s "gate districts" for the heritage project “De Vierkante Kilometer” (The Square Kilometer), for which she received a European Heritage Award in 2024. Previously, she contributed to productions such as “Het verhaal van Vlaanderen” (The Story of Flanders) and “Kinderen van de migratie” (Children of Migration) and authored successful books. Together with Rotterdambased illustrator Aimée de Jongh, she made Onderweg: migraties die de wereld veranderen (On the Move: Migrations That Change the World), a book about key historical migrations and the ways migrants have shaped the world. At Crossing Border Kids, she will present the book Onderweg, followed by an interactive workshop.

DUTCH)

Jean-Claude Mourlevat

Jean-Claude Mourlevat is one of France’s leading children and

young adult authors. With a particular love for fairy tale, fable and fantasy, he draws on literary traditions to create worlds that resemble no other. He surprises readers with each new book, assuming new guises and using unexpected narrative devices. He has received many awards, like the Prix Sorcières and the Prix des incorruptibles. He also recently received the prestigious ALMA, the Nobel prize for children’s literature. His Jefferson stories portray the adventures of Jefferson, a hedgehog who loves to read. When the little hedgehog is accused of murdering his hairdresser and is forced to flee from the safety of his home, his novel-reading habit proves to be of critical importance. At Crossing Border Kids, he will perform a dramatized read-aloud from his books.

(DUTCH)

(FRENCH/DUTCH)

On Instagram:

@joetoddstanton

@degendttina

@jeanclaudemourlevat

FULL PROGRAMME

Beyhan Gültaşlar 2+ / TURKISH/DUTCH

Rocío Pérez Vallejo 6+ / ITALIAN/ENGLISH/DUTCH

Please note: age specifications are just a guideline. Everyone is welcome to join and stay for all events.

Jarvis 4+ / ENGLISH/DUTCH

Ulrich Hub 8+ / GERMAN/DUTCH

Is 3 te veel? (Querido)

Vogel en Beer (series – Gottmer)

In addition to the events, there will also be a lounge/café area, free-to-join workshops in the hall and a bookshop with book signing events. Just bring your kids and their friends and come along! There will be much to explore.

Marta Altés 4+ / SPANISH/DUTCH Big Tiger (Macmillan)

Joe Todd-Stanton 6+ / ENGLISH/DUTCH De verloren robot; Mythes van meneer Markus (series – De Vier Windstreken)

Visit Crossing Border Kids on Sunday November 8 > Theater de Vaillant / Hobbemastraat 120, 2526 JS, The Hague NEWS, PROGRAMME & TICKETS: CROSSINGBORDER.NL

Kamishibai reading "Poetry is evergreen"

Bommetjes verboden; Een eigenwijs schaap; De avonturen van manke eend en wilde haan (Parade)

Tina De Gendt 9+ / DUTCH

Onderweg: migraties die de wereld veranderden (Lannoo)

Jean-Claude Mourlevat 9+ / FRENCH/DUTCH

Jefferson (series – Lannoo)

Sara De Martino 12+ / ITALIAN/DUTCH

Lilli (Blauw Gras)

Contact Stichting Other World Productions Kerkstraat 11 2514 KP The Hague The Netherlands

CROSSING BORDER Where literature and music clash and collaborate on stage

TUESDAY 3 - SUNDAY 8 NOVEMBER 2026

Copy editor: Anna Eble / Graphic design: Robert Muda van Hamel / Production: Nautilus Leiden

info@crossingborder.nl www.crossingborder.nl