Of Words and Touch and Dance: A Collaboration

After a first trial run in the spring of 2012, when the IWP was invited to collaborate with the dynamic Battery Dance Company of NYC during a reading tour on location in Fortalezza (Brazil), a second opportunity came our way in the fall of 2012. With “freedom” – the ability to move without constraints—as the keyword, writers submitted short texts, which then came to double as both inspiration and score for the dancers’ performances.

In fact, the word “freedom” had been keyed to the space originally chosen for the event, the Grand Hall of the Ellis Island Immigration Museum, and preparations were well underway with the assistance of the National Park Service staff. When Hurricane Sandy struck on October 29th, less than a week before our scheduled performance, battering Ellis Island along with huge swaths of the northeastern shoreline, the Battery Dance Company generously welcomed the writers to their own—miraculously unscathed—work space in lower Manhattan.

IWP participants

  • Taleb Alrefai (Kuwait)
  • Genevieve Asenjo (Philippines)
  • Luis Bravo (Uruguay)
  • T.J. Dema (Botswana)
  • Alisa Ganieva (Russia)
  • Christopher Merrill (USA)
  • Christopher Mlalazi (Zimbabwe)
  • Pandora (Burma)
  • Milagros Socorro (Venezuela)
  • Stephanie Ye (Singapore)

Happening Now

  • In addition to becoming the Berlin LitFest’s first curator-in-residence, Helon Habila has also just received Kaduna Books and Art Festival’s KabaFest Lifetime Achievement Award, celebrating his "exceptional writing and significant contributions to the development of literature globally."

  • Congratulations to Enah Johnscott, whose film Half Heaven won three awards at the Cameroon International Film Festival—best film, best director, and best cinematographer.

  • We regret the passing, on April 11, 2024, of the distinguished Romanian author and critic Dan Cristea, who served as the editor in chief of the Luceafărul de Dimineață cultural monthly. In addition to being an alum of the 1985 Fall Residency, Cristea received his PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Iowa.

  • Our congratulations to 1986 Fall Residency writer Kwame Dawes, who has been named the new poet laureate of Jamaica.

  • Congratulations to our colleagues Jennifer Croft and Aron Aji, who are among those serving as judges for the National Book Awards this year, in their case in the category of translated literature.

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