Center for Literature: Westopia – The White White West? A Performative Exploration of the Multilingual Literature of the Future

The WESTOPIA literature festival at Hülshoff Castle in Havixbeck in the Münstlerland brought seven international guests to North Rhine-Westphalia from 1^st to 5^th September 2021. The five-day "Festival für eine mehrsprachige Literatur der Zukunft" (Festival for a Multilingual Literature of the Future) was organised by the Center for Literature (CfL) based there in cooperation with the international authors' collective foundintranslation and dealt with the question of what a diverse and inclusive literary landscape could look like in readings, performances, workshops and discussions.

In addition to visiting the festival events, visitors from Belgium, Finland, Greece, Lithuania, Slovenia and Switzerland, including festival directors, programme coordinators and authors, met with Jörg Albrecht, director of the Center for Literature, with the curatorial team of WESTOPIA as well as with participating artists and authors.

In Mülheim an der Ruhr, a network meeting took place with the artistic director of the Ringlokschuppen Ruhr, Matthias Frense, and the director of the Silent University Ruhr, Bridget Fonkeu. The participants also met there for lunch with Katharia Majer and Ronja Kokott from the Literaturbüro Ruhr e.V. and Yasemin Tayeboun from Interkultur Ruhr. A guided tour of the Künstlerdorf Schöppingen was combined with a meeting with the managing director of the Stiftung Künstlerdorf Schöppingen, Julia Haarmann, and current scholarship holders. A further meeting was set up in Münster that focussed on the recent international call for proposals for the stadt.land.text NRW‘s literary residency programme.