Book Launch London – White Nights: Urszula Honek in conversation with Kate Webster & Katharina Volckmer 2nd Nov
2nd November, 6:30-9pm, Burley Fisher Books, Haggerston, London
The launch of Kate Webster’s translation of the debut short story collection by poet Urszula Honek, originally written in Polish, White Nights!
White Nights is a series of interconnected stories concerning the various tragedies and misfortunates that befall a group of people who all grew up and live(d) in the same village in the Beskid Niski region, in southern Poland.
Each story centres itself around a different character and how it is that they manage to cope, survive or merely exist, despite, and often in ignorance of, the poverty, disappointment, tragedy, despair, brutality and general sense of futility that surrounds them.
Urszula relates to us, with the sincerest care and honesty, a localised, yet so clearly universal, story of ruin and hope: a story where the protagonists do not ask to be understood, but merely to be seen and to be heard.
Kate Webster’s brilliant translation of Urszula’s poetic, yet often earthen, prose brings us to places that, though they are seldom seen in literature, we may never forget.
Joining Urszula and Kate in conversation will be the author Katharina Volckmer (The Appointment (2020), Fitzcarraldo Editions + Avid Reader Press).
Copies of White Nights (signed by both author + translator) will be available, on the night, and Burley Fisher will be the first place that you can get one!
MTO Press will also have (free) and exclusive merch available to celebrate their first publication!
Reserve a place here:
Launch: White Nights by Urszula Honek, tr. by Kate Webster – Burley Fisher Books