Participants by Genre

Stephan SANDERS is a well-known figure in the Netherlands for his widely read commentary in major newspapers and his participation in literary and cultural debates on national television. He studied philosophy and political science at the University of Amsterdam. Since 1982 he has published articles in numerous Dutch weeklies and newspapers and has worked for several radio stations. Since his debut in 1991 he published four collections of essays and stories. He is a member of the Dutch Rushdie Defense Committee and of the European Writers' Parliament. Stephan Sanders is known for his sharp, independent and bright comments in Holland's leading newspaper de Volkskrant. He is attending the IWP on a full grant from the Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature.

Miklos MOLNAR leads an international workshop for translators and researchers of Hungarian literature. As a young writer confronting the Communist system, he was unable to finish university and worked as a manual laborer for some years before starting a career as translator of Anglo-Saxon literature. Since then, he has been a freelance writer and translator of German and French works, in addition to translating the short fiction of Capote, Updike, Frost, and Ginsberg among others. He founded and co-owned a small publishing house, and worked on the editorial staff of various Hungarian literary reviews. He was the 1984 recipient of the Kassak Prize for Avant Garde Literature, the prestigious Attila Jozsef Prize in 1990, and held a scholarship from the French Ministry in Education in 1991. He is interested in Sufism and its impact on mystical writing. He is a USIA grantee at the IWP.

Buket UZUNER is, because of her mass appeal, potentially "the next Orhan Pamuk." (Mr. Pamuk, Turkey's leading author, attended the IWP in 1985.) Her novels include Two Green Water Sables, Their Mothers, Fathers, Lovers, and the Others (written in 1991, issued in its 16th edition in 1996); and The Sound of Fishsteps (1993; 10th edition, 1996). Her short story collections have similarly undergone multiple reprintings. She earned the M.S. in biology from Haceteppe University in Ankara, and did graduate work in public health at the University of Michigan, and graduate studies in Norwegian and Ecology at the University of Bergen in Norway. She is currently editor for foreign literature at the Remzi Publishing House and a reviewer for the weekly edition of the daily, Cumhuriyet. She is jointly supported at the IWP by the USIA and the board of the Turkish Airlines.

Petr Markovich ALESHKOVSKIY is considered one of the most interesting contemporary writers in his country today. The author of five books, his novel The Life of Ferret was short-listed for Russia's equivalent of the Booker Prize; his latest novel is Vladimir Chigrintsev. Educated at the Moscow State University, Mr. Aleshkovskiy was a scholar at the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies in Washington, D.C. in 1989 when his program there was interrupted by the breakup of the Soviet Union. He is particularly interested in the American Midwest and the American South (since his novels are set in the Russian provinces), and he'd like to write a book of essays on the American countryside. Two international publications of his work are underway, one in Frankfurt and another in the United States. He is a grantee of the USIA.

Rodrigo FRESAN is felt to be perhaps the most important young writer in Argentina today. He is editor of the prestigious magazine Pagina 30. The widespread impact of his work is felt through his novels which have been described as "compelling, often moving, meditations" on the influence of North American culture on Argentine society. His novel, Historia Argentina, is a humorous analysis of Argentina's cultural development in the past decade; his new novel Esperanto is scheduled for publication by Gallimard in France, and his short fiction has been anthologized in Chile, Spain, Venezuela, and England. He looks forward to completing his next two novels, tentatively titled Ciencias Exactas and Mambru, while he is at the University of Iowa. The USIA is providing his fellowship.