The digital project “Virtual Encouters” presents an exciting exchange between the renowned author Andrea Grill and the translator Tess Lewis. The virtual encounter offers a special insight into the working relationship between the two and into Grill’s latest novel “Cherubino”. A strong woman, two men, a pregnancy and the grand opera – in the novel Cherubino, nominated for the German Book Prize 2019, Grill tells the story of a singer between child and art. The project is being carried out in collaboration with the Ingeborg Bachmann Centre for Austrian Literature & Culture in London.
Andrea Grill, born in Bad Ischl in 1975, studied in Salzburg and Thessaloniki, among other places, and received her doctorate in biology at the University of Amsterdam. She has been awarded, among others, the Bremen Prize for Literature (2011) and the Prize for Literature of the City of Vienna (2013). Andrea Grill lives in Vienna and teaches at the University of Bern. Most recently, Zsolnay published the novels Das Paradies des Doktor Caspari (2015) and Cherubino (2019).
Tess Lewis is a writer and translator from French and German. Her translations include works by Peter Handke, Maja Haderlap, Christine Angot and Philippe Jaccottet. She has won a number of prizes, including the ACFNY Translation Prize 2015 and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is a consulting editor for The Hudson Review and writes essays and reviews on European literature for numerous magazines and newspapers. In 2014 and 2015 she curated the Festival Neue Literatur, New York’s first annual festival of German literature in English.
Details about “Cherubino”: The 39-year-old singer Iris Schiffer is determined, self-confident and on a good career path. She will soon make her debut at the Met as Cherubino in Mozart’s opera “Marriage of Figaro” and unexpectedly she is offered a leading role at the Salzburg Festival. But the best news is her pregnancy, of which Iris initially tells neither the two fathers in question nor her agent anything, especially since the premiere in Salzburg and the day of birth are close together. Andrea Grill tells of a confident woman who is only gradually ready to accept her pregnancy. She takes what she needs from men. Because what counts is her and her child.
www.acflondon.org/events/virtual-encounters-andrea-grill-tess-lewis-conversation/
