Haus für Poesie

Ghayath Almadhoun (born in Damascus in 1979) is a Palestinian poet and film maker. He was born in a Palestinian refugee camp and studied Arabic Literature at the University of Damascus. He has published three volumes of verse in Arabic, the most recent of which was published in Beirut in 2014. In 2008 Almadhoun emigrated to Sweden where he now lives and works. He has collaborated with Swedish poet Marie Silkeberg on two books of poetry, most recently Till Damaskus. They have also produced several poetry films together. Ghayath Almadhoun’s poems have been translated into several languages including Swedish, German, Dutch, Greek, Slovenian, Italian, English, French, Danish and Chinese.

Cristina Ali Farah (born 1973 in Verona, Italy) is is the daughter of a Somali father and an Italian mother. She grew up in Mogadishu and emigrated with her family in 1991 because of the civil war. After spending several years in Hungary, she has now been living in Rome since the mid-1990s.
Christina Ali Farah‘s poetry is intercultural, drawing on, among other things, her first encounters with the poetry of Somalia, where the oral tradition is still the main method for disseminating poetry today. This focus on orality is also inherent in her performances, which sometimes verge on Spoken Word. In some of her poems Farah mixes Italian and Somali to make a bilingual weave of sound. Her texts, whether prose or poetry, frequently deal with the topic of migration.
As well as being a writer, Cristina Ali Farah also teaches Somali language and literature at the University of Rome and writes for journals such as Internazionale and the Vogue Black Blog.  
Publications (selection):
Ai confini del verso: Poesia della migrazione in italiano, (‘At the Borders of Verse: Italian Poetry of Migration’), edited by Mia Lecomte. (Le Lettere, 2006)
A New Map: The poetry of Migrant Writers in Italy, texts collected by Mia Lecomte et Luigi Bonaffini. (Green Integer, 2007)
Madre piccola (‘Little Mother’) (Frassinelli, 2007)  

Jazra Khaleed (born 1979 in Grozny, Chechnya) is one of a new generation of Greek poets. He has lived in Greece since early childhood, writes exclusively in Greek and is bringing new cultural influences, ideas and rhythms into Greek verse.
His works are protests against the injustices in contemporary Greece, dealing with the difficult and desperate lives of migrants from Africa and the Middle and near East in the slums of Athens. His poems and translations – of, among others, Elfriede Jelinek, Ann Cotten and Keston Sutherland – also appear in various blogs and magazines.
Jazra & Balinese Beast: Fuck the Apocalypse
http://www.mediafire.com/?1e5cs1lwj8adx7h

Abbas Khider (born 1973 in Baghdad, Iraq) was arrested at 19 for his political activities and suffered several years of imprisonment and torture. After his release, he fled Iraq in 1996 and spent some years as an illegal refugee in various countries. Abbas Khider has lived in Germany since 2000. He studied Philosophy and Literature in Munich and has published two collections of verse. He still writes his poems in Arabic, but writes prose in German.
Khider’s first novel, ‘Der falsche Inder’ (‘The Fake Indian’) (Edition Nautilus, 2009) attracted a great deal of interest in the cultural pages of the national newspapers, and earned Khider the Certificate of Merit for Literature for the Iraqi Society for the Promotion of Culture in 2010. In the same year he also received the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize. His second novel, ‘Die Orangen des Präsidenten’ (‘The President’s Oranges’) was published in 2011, also by Edition Nautilus.  
Publications:
Der falsche Inder (Edition Nautilus, 2009)
Die Orangen des Präsidenten (Edition Nautilus, 2011)  
Prizes:
Alfred Döblin Fellowship of the Berlin Academy of the Arts (2009)
Working grant from the German Literature Fund’s writers‘ promotion scheme (2009–2010)
Certificate of Merit for Literature for the Iraqi Society for the Promotion of Culture (2010)
Adelbert von Chamisso Promotion Prize of the Robert Bosch Foundation (2010

Fiston Mwanza Mujila (born in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo in 1981) studied Literature and Human Sciences at the University of Lubumbashi. He emigrated to Graz, where he now lives and is working for his PhD on African literature. His poems, prose works and plays are often reactions to the political unrest following Congolese independence and its effects on everyday life For his debut novel Tram 83 he was awarded the 2014 French Voices fellowship and the Grand Prix du Premier Roman of the Société des gens de lettres. The novel was also shortlisted for the Prix du Monde. In 2008 Fiston Mwanza Mujila’s book of verse Poèmes et rêvasseries was published. In 2009 he won the Gold Medal for Literature at the 6th Francophone Festival in Beirut, and in 2010 a prize for the best play script at the Mainz Staatstheater.

Publications:
Et les moustiques sont des fruits à pépins. Lansman 2015
Kin kiesse, les écritures congolaises.Éditions Sépia 2015
Tram 83. Éditions Métailié 2014
Poèmes et rêvasseries. Linkgua Ediciones 2008