Ian De Toffoli; Credit: FOCUNA

Writer and publisher Ian De Toffoli has been chosen for the author residency at the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin (LCB) where he will stay from 15 September to 15 November 2018.

A jury of experts has selected Ian De Toffoli as this year’s author in residence at the LCB. In 2019, a second period of residence is planned in Bourglinster.

According to the author, the writing project is a set of short texts entitled, for the moment, “Luxembourgish Lives”, which he describes as “a hybrid genre, at the intersection of three literary genres”. He elaborated that it mixes “Vita” from Antiquity, the historical essay and exofiction, “a literary genre that creates a fiction based on elements of reality, often involving famous characters, but which allows itself inventions and is turned towards representation subjective that a writer can make said characters. It is therefore a biographical fiction.”

The author's residency at the LCB is an initiative of the Fonds culturel national in partnership with the “Lëtzebuerger Bicherfrënn - Les Amis du Livre a.s.b.l.” and in collaboration with the Centre national de littérature, the Ministry of Culture and the Cultural Service of the Luxembourg Embassy in Berlin.

The jury was composed of Irène Altman (Lëtzebuerger Bicherfrënn), Nathalie Bender (literary critic), Claude D. Conter (Centre national de littérature), Jeanne E. Glesener (University of Luxembourg) and Christiane Krier (Lëtzebuerger Bicherfrënn).