Wortwechsel (Exchanging Words)
Four Authors Exchange Views on Culture in Times of Crisis

© Georgii Kravchenko

Ganna Gnedkova grew up bilingually. She studied comparative literature at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Kyiv and the University of Vienna. She is an academic, book critic and journalist. Since 2016, she has been translating fiction and non-fiction from English and German into Ukrainian and vice versa. In 2020, the first text of her own, Mein Name sei G., on the Exile Literary Award for poetry. In 2022 she received the Raniser Debut Fellowship and is working on a collection of stories with the working title Das Kind und der Tod (The Child and Death). Ganna Gnedkova lives in Vienna and is married to the Austrian writer Peter Marius Huemer. Since the beginning of the large-scale Russian war against Ukraine, she has been a contact person at the media centre of the Ukrainian community.

© Maria Obermeier

Sveta Grigorjeva is an Estonian choreographer, dancer, poet and critic. She has published two collections of poetry, who is afraid of sveta grigorjeva (2013) and American beauty (2018); the third collection, Frankenstein will be published this year. Her literary work has always centred on questions of identity and representation, especially issues of gender and nationality. Being born among the ruins of the Soviet Union and raised in a democracy in Estonia as the daughter of an Estonian mother and Russian father has given her a certain understanding of the complexity of “double heritages”, especially in critical times. Her latest staged performances, FAKERZ (2021) and TEKHNE (2020), mainly circled the question “What is there left to dance in a neo-liberal and quickly rising neo-fascist era?”. She has danced in her own choreographies / staged pieces and collaborated with other artists in Estonia and Europe. She completed her Master’s degree at Tallinn University, Estonia, and studied Choreography and Performance at the Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen, Germany, under the guidance of Bojana Kunst.

© Double Focus

Sharif Ahmedov was born in 1969 in the Andijan region of Uzbekistan. In 1992, he graduated from the Department of Journalism at Tashkent University. After completing his university studies, he worked in Uzbekistan for various media such as newspapers, broadcasting agency and publishing houses. Until 2006 he was a reporter for the BBC Radio’s Uzbek service. Since 2006 he has been living in The Netherlands. Since his student days, Sharif Ahmedov has been involved in literature, writing stories and essays. He has translated collections of short stories by the Argentinian writers Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar and books by the Russian writer Andrey Platonov. He also translated the most significant book of the Lebanese-American philosopher and writer Khalil Gibran – “The Prophet” and a work of Dutch children’s writer Annie M. G. Schmidt – “Minoes”.

© Rafal Komorowski

Dato (David) Turashvili is a Georgian fiction writer, the author of novels, movie scripts and plays. He studied literature, film and art history at the universities of Tbilisi, London and Madrid. His first collection of short stories was published after the restoration of the Georgian independence from the Soviet empire. Before the liberation, Dato Turashvili was one of the leaders of the student protest movement against the Soviet regime in Georgia and for the democracy. He has published 22 books so far, including bestselling novels, stories and collection of plays. His novels have been translated into 20 languages and published in 15 countries; his plays are performed in Georgia and abroad. Furthermore, Dato Turashvili is the author of scientific research in literary criticism and historiography. He has translated prose and poetry from Russian, Spanish and English into Georgian. His other interests include mountaineering – he has participated in the expeditions to the Caucasus, Andes and Himalayas. Dato Turashvili is the host of the most popular TV show about books in Georgia. He is married to Maka Kekelidze, with whom he has four daughters and a dog.