KfW Bankengruppe Berlin, Historischer Kassensaal, Behrensstraße 33, Berlin
Thursday 18 June, 19:00, doors open at 18:30
Admission is free. Registration is required here.
Two women, one correspondence: As part of the project Untold Narratives. Weiter Schreiben Correspondence with Afghan Authors, Batool Haidari from the Paranda Network and the German writer Marica Bodrožić engaged in an intensive letter exchange. Across a distance of 5,000 kilometres, they wrote letters to one another before, during and after the Taliban’s takeover – personal, poetic, political.
Now they are meeting for the first time to read from their letters, discuss writing, their exchange and literature’s ability to open up spaces that would otherwise remain closed. A literary event about encounters and retelling unheard stories.
The event will be held in German. Contributions in Dari will be translated simultaneously. The event will be moderated by Vivian Perkovic, a journalist, editor and presenter at Deutschlandfunk Kultur.
Batool Haitari is a clinical psychologist, writer, and activist who has worked in Syria, Iran, and Afghanistan. She was teaching psychology at Kabul University before she fled Afghanistan with her family in August 2021. Her work has been published in Dari, German, and English in My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird: New Fiction by Afghan Women (MacLehose Press, February 2022), My Dear Kabul: A year in the life of an Afghan women’s writing group (Coronet, August 2024), A Tongueless Speaker: A collection of short stories by Afghan women writers (Nogaam, 2025) and has been published with Words Without Borders. She now lives in the UK with her three children and husband. Her debut book Asylum Hotel is forthcoming with Profile Books in 2027.
Marica Bodrožić born in 1973 in the hinterland of Split in Dalmatia, she moved to Hesse in 1983 and now lives in Berlin and Brandenburg. She writes poetry, novels, short stories, and essays. Since her debut, Tito ist tot (2002), she has published numerous books exploring memory, philosophy, and mysticism. Her most recent works are Das Herzflorett and Die Rebellion der Liebenden (Penguin Random House, 2024). She has received numerous awards and grants for her work.
Vivian Perkovic, born in Winterberg in 1978, is a journalist and presenter with many years of experience in television and radio. She works for, among others, the 3sat programme Kulturzeit and Deutschlandfunk Kultur. She has received numerous awards for her work, most recently the German Television Award in the “Best News Programme” category for Kulturzeit.
The project Untold Narratives – Weiter Schreiben. Correspondence with Afghan Authors is a cooperation between the foundation KfW Stiftung, Untold Narratives (London) and Weiter Schreiben (Berlin).
Image credit: Fatemeh Hassani
