June 27, 7:30 pm
Alexander Ilyanen is a St Petersburg prose-writer and poet, author of the novels And Finn, The Road to Y, The Vanity Boutique and The Pension, all published by KOLONNA Publications. He received the Andrey Belov award for The Vanity Boutique and was finalist for the NOS award for The Pension, and is one of contemporary queer literature’s most important exponents. His creative genealogy is often traced back to Evgeniy Kharitonov (Tears on the Flowers) and through him back to Vassily Rozanov (Fallen Leaves). Ilyanen’s writing — diarised, fragmented and “mosaical” — is one of the most important experiments of the last literary decades. During the evening at the New Holland literary club he will read excerpts from his novels.
Admission is free of charge. The number of participants is limited. Please register in advance.
A series of meetings for people interested in contemporary prose and poetry will include theoretical lectures on literature and book presentations as well as short poetry and prose readings. Every writer who has been invited to the literary readings is connected in some way either with St Petersburg itself or with the writing that the city inspired. In this way, one of the programme’s thematic tenets will be the interaction between the city and the text, characters and heroes of prose fiction and research works. This is further enhanced by the particular mythical richness of New Holland island, located on the border with St Petersburg’s Kolomna, the city’s most important “literary” region.
Along with the most important and influential representatives of the St Petersburg literary scene, also invited to take part are authors whose creative and research interests are connected to an extent with the reevaluation of St Petersburg’s writings, its history and mythology. Writers including Alexander Ilyanen, Alexander Skidan, Pavel Pepperstein, Alexandra Petrova, Lev Danilkin and Alexey Konakov will address the meetings’ audiences.
