Dr. Amy Cutler is a Lecturer in Interactive Narrative at Exeter University in the UK. She works at the fringes of multiple disciplines and art forms: poetry, bio-art, live cinema, game design, and cultural geography. Her recent album, SISTER TIME, considers the idea of the love song under the conditions of the Anthropocene. It was on the Best Album of the Year lists in 2023 by Bandcamp, Tapped Out, and The Wire magazine.  www.amycutler.net

Francis Gene-Rowe is a creator/critic who works with poetry, games, and science fiction, and who teaches global media at the University of Southampton. You can find their poetry in Strange Realism (Future Natures) and Corroding the Now: Poetry and Science|SF (Veers Books & Crater Press). Francis is a co-director of the London Science Fiction Research Community, and has published scholarship on petrocultures, cyberpunk, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Philip K. Dick. https://linktr.ee/francisgenerowe.

Christiane Vadnais holds a Master’s in Creative Writing from Laval University (Québec, Canada). She writes fiction and works in the literary world as an event programmer and producer of innovative reading experiences. She has published one novel and several short stories and collaborates on numerous transdisciplinary projects. Her literary work has been translated into six languages and she has won several awards.

Since 2017 she has been writing ecofiction mainly exploring possible futures. Her debut book, “Faunes” (“Fauna”, English translation published in 2020 by Coach House Books) is a constellation of dreamlike stories where the boundaries between humanity and animality blur until new balances are established. From 2020 to 2022, she took part in the creation of a vast collective utopia, “L’île inventée” (“The Invented Island”): in the form of a book, a museum exhibition and a podcast presented in Québec and France, this project imagines the construction of a society of humans and plants on a small island in the South Atlantic, during an alternative 19th century. Vadnais herself characterises her creative work as follows: “Navigating between science fiction, magic realism and poetic writing about the intimate and the body, her work seeks to lift literature out of anthropocentrism and question the existence of living beings in an era of upheaval.” 

Christiane Vadnais is currently a writer-in-residence at Tartu UNESCO City of Literature and during her stay she plans to work on her second novel, get engaged in the local literary scene, and strengthen the ties between Tartu and Quebec as two sister Cities of Literature in the UNESCO Creative Cities Network.

David Hartley was kidnapped during the 2023 Prima Vista festival and placed inside
an ancient pine tree deep inside a forbidden forest. While there, he befriended the
animals by giving them copies of his short story collection “Fauna” (Fly on the Wall
Press, 2021), which they greatly appreciated. In return, they fetched him food and
water and taught him essential survival techniques, many of which he has now
forgotten. He managed to escape and made it home to Manchester, UK where wrote
a series of dark folktales inspired by the experience. Using the tricks of their resident
artistic wizard Henri Hütt, the Prima Vista festival has enticed him into returning for
2024 to present his findings. For one day only, he will be exhibited to the public
during “The Forest of Ink & Skin”, created in collaboration with Henri. He urges you to
attend in case it’s the last thing he ever does.

He can also be found on Instagram: @DHartleyWriter, and if you’d like to while away
some time, many of his weird little tales can be found for free on
davidhartleywriter.com

Jinn Bug is a poet, photographer, gardener, activist, visual artist, fibre artist, and life-long dreamer. Her photography, vignettes, and poems have appeared in Appalachian Heritage, New Southerner, LEO Weekly, Fiolet & Wing—An Anthology of Domestic Fabulism, Aquillrelle, For Sale, Pure Uncut Candy, The Rooted Reader, Gyroscope Review, Necro Magazine and other print and online publications. Her most recent book of poetry is “Nights at the Museum”. In 2023, her sonnet “Eden without Us” won the Southern Shakespeare Festival worldwide sonnet contest. She is currently working on a book called “Everything Lost Comes to the Intersection.” Visit her at www.JinnBug.com

Ron Whitehead is an American poet, activist, and scholar who has published dozens of books and albums. Whitehead was born in 1947 in Kentucky, studied at the University of Louisville, and has been active in education and cultural management for decades. His work, which Hunter S. Thompson has characterised as “a dazzling mix of folk wisdom and pure mathematics.” has been translated into more than 20 languages, and he has performed at many festivals in both the United States and Europe, including Estonia. In 2012, he performed at the “Zero Tolerance. Diverse Universe. Explosion” performance art festival, and in 2014, he appeared at the HeadRead literary festival. In 2019, Whitehead was a guest of the Tartu City of Literature residency program and organised a 24-hour cultural marathon called Insomniacathon in collaboration with Prima Vista. His poetry, co-written with his partner Jinn Bug, inspired by his residency, was published in 2020 as a bilingual book “Ööd muuseumis / Nights at the Museum,” translated into Estonian by Doris Kareva.

Whitehead’s poetic style can be characterised as a post-Beat generation movement, which has also been influenced by rock music, European avant-garde, and his home state of Kentucky. Whitehead was selected as the American Beat Poet Laureate for 2021-2022, and in 2022, the National Beat Poetry Foundation awarded him the title of lifelong New Generation Beat Poet Laureate.

Argo Vals is an Estonian composer, guitarist and live electronics artist. His focus has been on playing the guitar, but he is also intrigued by the variety and movement between different and opposite producers of sound. He draws inspiration from real life, tightly connected to the imaginary world. He composes mostly on guitars, keyboards and drum machines alongside real drummers, and plays around with captured loops created and recorded by him. 

Argo Vals has released three full-length solo albums: “In Loving Memory Of” in 2020, “Nokturn” in 2015 and “Tsihcier” in 2012. Two of these have been nominated at the Estonian Music Awards in Alternative/Indie Album of the Year. He is currently working on his first EP.

Argo is and has been a member of several bands playing progressive, modern jazz-influenced, post-rock, indie-rock, acoustic music and mathcore – quite a variety of sounds and approaches. He has composed music for bands Argo Vals Band, Viljandi Guitar Trio, Talamak, and Animal Drama; composed and arranged music for acoustic guitar duo ValsPetti, acoustic guitar quartet ValsPetti + Kartau/Kiivit and for the duo with his brother Aigar Vals; composed for dance performances, documentaries, TV series and theatre.

Anne Richter (1973) is a poet and writer living in the UNESCO City of Literature Heidelberg. She studied modern languages at the universities of Jena, Oxford and Bologna.

Since 2009, Anne has gained recognition for her writing and has been the recipient of various creative writing grants. In 2011 she was nominated for the respected Ingeborg Bachmann Prize. Anne published one short story collection, three novels and a collection of poetry. Her debut novel, Fremde Zeichen (2013, English translation Distant Signs 2019), chronicles the lives of various members of two East German families across three generations. In her second novel, Unvollkommenheit (Imperfection), she widens her narrative beyond German borders, to Romania in the 1990s, a country then still in transition from communism to capitalism. Her third novel, Sendezeit (Airtime), published in March 2024, is about blind teenagers who want to make radio in the early GDR and come up against the limits of freedom of expression. Anne has participated in several poetry and prose events in various European cities, including „Expedition Poetry“ in the UNESCO City of Literature Prague, a translation project by Czech and German poets.

Joelle Taylor is the author of 4 collections of poetry and a novel. Her most recent collection C+NTO & Othered Poems won the 2021 T.S Eliot Prize and was the subject of a Radio 4 arts documentary Butch. C+NTO was nominated for the Rathbone Folio Prize, longlisted for the Ondaatje Prize, and won the 2022 Polari Book Prize. It was named by The Telegraph, the New Statesman, The Guardian, The White Review & Times Literary Supplement as one of the best poetry books of the year, and was DIVA magazine’s Book of the Month, as well as awarded 5 stars by the Morning Star. She completed a book tour of Australia including the Sydney Opera House in March 2022 and was Queensland Poetry Festival Poet in Residence (Digital) in 2023. C+NTO is currently being adapted for theatre with a view to touring. She is a co-curator and host of Out-Spoken Live, a resident at the Southbank Centre, and an editor at Out-Spoken Press. She has judged numerous literary prizes including the Forward Prize, the Jerwood Fellowship, the Polari Prize, and the Ondaatje Prize. Her novel of interconnecting stories The Night Alphabet will be published by RiverRun in Spring of 2024. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and the 2022 Saboteur Spoken Word Artist of the Year. 

Taylor has visited Estonia before; she first performed at Prima Vista in 2018 when Sirel Heinloo, one of the leaders of TarSlämm, asked her in an interview for Õpetajate Leht how she came to poetry. “Writing is just one step further from breathing and eating. It is an essential art of survival for me. Initially, I wrote to understand myself, to testify to myself. Now I write to bear witness to the world,” replied Taylor.

www.joelletaylor.co.uk

Eike Eplik (1982) is a sculptor and installation artist who often incorporates motifs from nature into her works. Working directly with materials is important for Eplik, who employs sculptural techniques ranging from traditional plaster casting and ceramics to wire sculpture, paper and wood assemblages, and found objects. The processes depicted in her art are often subconscious and cannot always be fully explained; her installations are narrative and poetic.

Eike Eplik graduated from Tartu Art College with a degree in sculpture (BA, 2007). During her studies, she furthered her education by working with various artists in Germany, Sweden, and Finland as part of her internships. She continued her studies at the Estonian Academy of Arts, specialising in sculpture (MA, 2010). Eplik currently works as a lecturer at the Pallas University of Applied Sciences. In 2006, she was awarded the Eduard Wiiralt Scholarship, and in 2012, she received a production grant for young artists from the contemporary art festival ART IST KUKU NU UT. She was nominated for the Sadolin Art Prize in 2015 and was awarded the Ado Vabbe Scholarship in 2018. Eike Eplik was one of the recipients of the national artist’s salary from 2021 to 2023, and in 2021, she was awarded the Annual Prize of the Cultural Endowment of Estonia. For more information, please visit the KKEK artist database and Eike Eplik’s website.

Olha Povoroznyk (1986) is a Ukrainian poet and filmmaker, born in Lviv. She is engaged in documentary and art projects at the intersection of video and text. She is the author of the poetry collection “Name of Water” (Krok, 2019). Her poems have been published in several magazines and anthologies. 

In 2015, Olha presented her first short poetic film “Name of Water” at the Shevchenko Scientific Society in New York. That same year, the premiere of the first documentary film “I See” took place at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Her short poetic film “Slowworm” (2017) took the main award in the national competition of the International Video Poetry Festival “Cyclops” in Kyiv. In Lviv, October 2015, at the 21st International Contemporary Music Festival “Contrasts,” the multimedia project “Preparation” by Ostap Slyvinskyi was presented, combining texts by writers who experienced war in the Balkans, contemporary classical music (Bohdan Sehin), video (Olha Povoroznyk), and performance (Ostap Slyvinskyi). In 2018, Povoroznyk, together with Slyvinskyi, Sehin, and Yuri Bulka, presented another multimedia project “Winter King” based on Slyvinskyi’s poetry. In the spring of 2018, the first solo exhibition of graphics “Curves” took place in Kyiv, and 2019, the exhibition of graphics “Dance for Yourself” was held in Lviv and Arnhem (Netherlands). Povoroznyk has illustrated several books, including her poetry book “The Name of Water”, In 2019, as a filmmaker, she, along with the Center for Urban History, produced a series of short documentary films exploring the relationship between the artist and the city through the example of 12 Lviv artists. 

In 2021, Olha created two poetic films: a film based on her poems “Port DeBorn” and a joint project with Ostap Slyvinskyi – “Open Windows.” In 2021, together with the Dialogue Arts Council, she created a documentary series “Change of Changes,” which collects and interprets memories and reflections on Lviv’s cultural and intellectual contexts on the eve of and immediately after Independence. 

In 2022–2023, she was in residency at Takt Berlin Leipzig Zeitz in Germany. The result of the residency was a group exhibition of Ukrainian artists “Save Place” at the Tapir Gallery in Berlin, where Olha presented the project “Survivor’s Guilt” (texts, videos). The Ukrainian Theater in Berlin, under the direction of director Pavlo Kravtsiv, staged the play “Trap” based on Olha’s texts. In 2023, she became a finalist for the UNESCO City of Literature Lviv Award.

Migro is a street theatre based in Krakow, founded in 2019 by Monika Kozłowska and Justyna Wójcik. The theatre specialises in wordless performances, built on gesture, dance, and mime – a theatrical language understood by every viewer. Performances are held on the streets, squares, and green areas of both small and large cities.

The main themes and sources of inspiration for the performances are ritual and travel. A journey is portrayed, depicted as the fate of a refugee, a wanderer’s journey through life, a journey into the past, which has left a lasting imprint on our present.

Migro brings” to Tartu its production “Echoes which tells the story of Poland’s eastern borderlands – war, migration, resettlement – what until recently seemed to be the past. The narrative of the performance is created through music, instrumental pieces, and songs performed by the actors.

The stage movement of the performance is directed by Natalia Iwaniec, using the Gaga technique, a unique movement language developed by Ohad Naharin.

In 2023, Migro Theatre performed in addition to Poland at festivals in France, Slovenia, Romania, Serbia, and Lithuania.

The guest performance in Tartu is funded by the Polish Ministry of Culture, National Heritage and Sport and supported by the Embassy of the Republic of Poland.

Adam Strug is a Polish singer and instrumentalist, songwriter, composer of theatre and film music, curator and music producer, documentary film director and screenwriter, radio and television journalist, and promoter of traditional music. Strug’s work incorporates elements of folklore and dance, as well as experimental songs in a more minimalist style. Compositions inspired by the work of Czesław Miłosz, presented in the program created for Prima Vista, stylistically resemble Adam Strug’s previous works. The concert refers to the interwar period (1918–1939) in Poland, a time of literary flourishing, which resulted in the emergence of new artistic trends and publishers where local poets were published. Adam Strug aims to take the audience with the musicians into a world where poems naturally harmonize with music. Interpretations of Czesław Miłosz’s poems resonate in the spirit of this period.

See also:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HulJEJt8e3U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFsPSFDj4ac
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlpQtTgMH-Q

Isaac Rosa (born in Seville in 1974) is a Spanish writer, known for his dozen novels, as well as short stories and comics. Additionally, he works as a journalist, primarily as a columnist for the online publication Eldiario.es. While his early novels looked into the past, touching on themes related to 20th-century Spanish history, he later tackled contemporary fears and human relationships, and now has shifted his focus towards the future in his work.

Rosa is renowned for being a writer aimed at discerning literary tastes and possessing a good style. He gained wider recognition with the work “Another Damn Civil War Novel!” (“¡Otra maldita novela sobre la guerra civil!”, 2007), satirizing the boom of Civil War themes prevailing in Spanish literature. His next novel, “The Empty Yesterday” (“El vano ayer”, 2004), earned him the prestigious Rómulo Gallegos Prize, awarded to the best work in the Spanish-speaking literary space over a two-year period. Translated into Estonian this year by Marianne Ots, his novel “Happy Ending” (“Feliz final”, 2018) was published by Toledo Publishing House. It’s a story about the possibility of love in the modern world turned upside down, as well as dreams of home, parenthood, blended families, sexuality, fidelity, and economic uncertainty.

The protagonist of Isaac Rosa’s latest novel, “A Safe Place” (“Lugar seguro”, 2022), builds bunkers to offer low-income people the chance to create even an illusory refuge in our threatening world. This near-future novel has been dubbed an antidystopia; the writer has stated that he is tired of the prevailing dystopian visions of the future and believes there is no reason to doubt our ability to trust each other and cooperate even in times of crisis.

Tõnis Vilu (s 1988) is an Estonian poet. His work deals with themes such as mental health, politics, nature, and love. Vilu’s books are almost always different from each other, and literary scholars have said that he has brought more diverse tonalities into Estonian poetry than anyone else.

Several of Vilu’s poetry books have received high acclaim. “Tundekasvatus” (“Sentimental Education”, 2020) received the annual award from the Cultural Endowment of Estonia’s Literature Foundation, while the poetry collections “Kink psühholoogile” (“A Gift to a Psychologist”, 2016) and “Kõik linnud valgusele” (“All the Birds for Light”, 2022) were awarded the Gustav Suits Poetry Prize, making Vilu the only person to have received this award twice so far. He has also been nominated for the Juhan Liiv Poetry Award.

Tõnis Vilu’s poems have been translated into English, Finnish, Lithuanian, and Slovenian. He is a recipient of the Estonian writers salary for the years 2022–2024. He lives in Tartu, writes, and goes on long walks.

Born in Heidelberg in 1982, Julia von Lucadou entered the literary world from the film industry, where she was active in both film and television. In her dystopian debut novel “Hochhauspringerin” (“The High-Rise Diver”), published in 2018, she paints a picture of a surveillance and welfare society oriented towards perfection and optimal performance. In her subsequent novel “Tick Tack,” published in 2022, Lucadou critically examines several manifestations typical of contemporary society from the perspective of the social media generation, describing the radicalisation of young people on the internet.

At the heart of the novel “The High-Rise Diver” are two women: Riva, a world-class top athlete and darling of millions, who suddenly quits training, and her “therapist,” a business psychologist and data analyst named Hitomi, whose task is to persuade Riva to train and compete again. Hitomi monitors Riva through a dozen camera lenses and microphones, herself being monitored by her superiors. The events of the novel unfold in a city-state with gleaming skyscrapers made of glass and metal, which could be located in any part of the world. “Glamour and Credits and Fame” are the currencies of this society, deprivation of which means expulsion from the metropolis and ending up in the neglected periphery.

In Julia von Lucadou’s novel, there are more elements of contemporary society than one would like to see – the writer has merely added colours and directed thoughts towards the future. Essentially, she poses the question: in what kind of world do we want to live? Speaking of influences, the writer whom Lucadou admires is Margaret Atwood.

An excerpt from the novel “The High-Rise Diver” with an afterword by Jaak Tomberg was published in the March issue of the magazine Akadeemia.

Emmi Itäranta (b. 1976) is a Finnish author who writes fiction in Finnish and English. Her novels have been characterised as lyrical dystopias with strong ecological undercurrents. Itäranta’s award-winning debut “Memory of Water” (2014) has been translated into more than 20 languages, and a film adaptation, “The Guardian of Water”, premiered in 2022. The novel was shortlisted for the Philip K. Dick Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the Golden Tentacle Award, as well as being included in the Otherwise Award honour list and among the finalists of Premio Salerno Libro d’Europa.

Itäranta has also published two other novels, “The Weaver” (US title) / “The City of Woven Streets” (UK title) (2016) and “The Moonday Letters” (Finnish edition Kuunpäivän kirjeet, 2020). The awards won by her books include the Kalevi Jäntti Prize for young authors, the Young Aleksis Kivi Prize, the HelMet Readers’ Choice Award, the Kuvastaja Award for the best Finnish fantasy book, Tampere City Literary Award and Tähtivaeltaja Award for the best science fiction book published in Finland. Furthermore, her works have been longlisted for the BSFA Award and the Dublin Literary Award.

Itäranta lived in the United Kingdom for 14 years before relocating back to Finland in 2021. She now lives and writes in Tampere, Finland, with her spouse and two cats.

Lesley-Ann Brown is a Trinidadian-American prose writer, poet and essayist active in Denmark where she founded the Say It Loud! poetry collective in Copenhagen featuring Black and women of color poets, and the Bandit Queen Press. She has two books published by Repeater Books, „Decolonial Daughter: Letters from a Black Woman to her European Son“ (2018) and „Blackgirl on Mars“ (2023), the latter based on her influential blog. 

In her works, Brown critically observes American and European gender and race stereotypes, imperialist dogmas and also the attitudes related to the poor and the immigrants in seemingly progressive Denmark. As a teacher, she is also critical of the educational system. In her writings, she is charting the ways towards a more caring and also more ecologically minded future society. 

At this year’s festival, Lesley-Ann Brown will be talking to Carolina Pihelgas.

Lydia Sandgren was born in 1987 and grew up in rural western Sweden. She later studied psychology at the University of Gothenburg. During her studies, she began writing the novel that in 2020 became her literary debut, “Collected Works”. The 690-page novel was awarded the August Prize the same year, the most prestigious Swedish literary prize, and has been translated into many languages. The English translation was published in 2023.

The novel has two timelines: one set in the 1980s and 1990s and another around 2010. The majority of the novel takes place in Gothenburg. It is a close and detailed portrayal of the city and its intellectual and cultural circles, as well as a deep exploration of the complexity of the human psyche and what shapes us as individuals.

“Collected Works” has been described as a family saga. The plot in both timelines revolves around the Berg family: Martin, a prospective writer who later becomes a book publisher, and his later wife Cecilia, who becomes a humanities researcher. In the couple’s vicinity is Martin’s friend, the artist Gustav Becker. Martin and Cecilia’s daughter Rakel is central to the later timeline. A great mystery has characterized her and her family’s life. One April day in 1997, Cecilia suddenly disappeared, leaving her husband and children behind and has never been heard from again.

In addition to the novel, Lydia Sandgren, who has always worked as a psychologist, has published opinion pieces and essays on psychiatry and psychology, as well as the essay “On Disease Art” about two Gothenburg artists from the 20th century diagnosed with schizophrenia.

NB! Since the author has fallen ill, the event will be held by the translator Tiina Kattel who is speaking about Ignė Zarambaitė’s novel “Süngete vete vaimud”, about the translation process and Lithuania Minor region.

Ignė Zarambaitė (b 1988) is a Lithuanian author of books for children and adolescents, and educator. She graduated in business and management from Vilnius University. But she took an unexpected turn in her career and started writing books for younger readers, which led to her becoming a very successful author.

Ignė Zarambaitė has published 13 books, participates in reading promotion campaigns, and organizes traditional and virtual book events for children, youth and adults. She also teaches, paints, and designs interior decorations and dolls.

The author’s first young adult novella, “Juodavandeniai” (2020) (“Süngete vete vaimud”, 2023), involves intrigues, dangerous teenage games, love and hate. This is a thriller about a pretty and smart yet rebellious sixteen-year-old Anna and her friends, the search for the right decisions in difficult situations and solutions to interpersonal problems, the maturation of the personality and the discovery of self. 

“Juodavandeniai” (“The Blackwaters”, “Süngete vete vaimud””):

• Included in White Ravens List 2020;
• Best Lithuanian YA Book Of The Year 2020 Award;
• Laureate of the International Jānis Baltvilkas Award 2023 in Latvia;
• Nominee of the award Paabeli Torn 2023 in Estonia;
• II place in the books for the 15+ age group at the National Library of Latvia reading promotion programme “Children, Youth and Parents’ Jury 2023” (the annual Great Reading Festival);
• Good book for youth (older school age) 2023.

The author’s debut book “Emilio laiškas” (“A Letter from Emil”, “Emili kiri”) was also published in Estonia in 2023.

It is possible to buy author’s book “Süngete vete vaimud” (published by Eesti Raamat).