Writing Samples of Visiting European Authors

“PUT YOUR hats on. The cold will make your ears drop off.” The woman’s words had a hollow sound. They rose steeply as if from the foot of a cliff and then collapsed with a dull thud in that two-roomed apartment of fifty square metres into which she had squeezed her life. For a long   …Continue Reading

Walking on dunes Even though you were moved by the abrupt shade of green of trees and grass and pine-tree undergrowth   even though you were moved by this summer’s nostalgia of smoke burning grass and grilled fish   even though you were moved by the children who, as yet innocent of the restrictions of   …Continue Reading

PASSION Do not cling to me, Be yourself.   Lovers are not Siamese twins.   Do not afraid be ever to stay Alone with your love.   It’s definitely better, Than not to love at all.   Do not turn the lovers’ nest Into a prison.     Will you patch the sails tightly? I   …Continue Reading

Day One: Redemption   A stooping, thickset old man strode with wide steps from the side of the Dvinsk railway track. His somewhat oversized head bent, panting heavily and irregularly, he crossed the splendid square of the new station, then the street – the hard snow, packed down by the many passers-by, crunched under the   …Continue Reading

Grandma’s Hair Anni has Grandma’s hair. But Anni no longer has her grandma. How can that be? Grandma got very sick, passed away, and was buried in a cemetery. It happened a long time ago, when Anni was still in her mommy’s belly. When Anni was born, she started growing fast and right away. Anni’s   …Continue Reading

Despite the hardships of the Japanese occupation, but in sharp contrast to Europe, almost all Jewish refugees in Shanghai survived the war. But when in the summer of 1945, after the surrender of Germany and Japan, the news from Vilnius reached Shanghai, an overwhelming feeling of loss rushed through the small Yiddish-speaking community. More than   …Continue Reading

I recently received a dark brown-black bean from a long-time friend, which he dug out of his pocket and handed me with the words: This is a lucky bean. He smiled mischievously and a bit like you know it from people who have the mischief in the neck. But more than that, the gift was   …Continue Reading

It was the light, the way it stung and burned and tore at him, hung over the forests and the lakes like an incentive to go on breathing, like a promise of new life. The light, that filled his veins with an urgency and robbed him of sleep. It was still only May, but he   …Continue Reading

“Why help? The sender must arrange the unloading. He’s a conductor, not a porter! They can think what they want! They’re all the same. Suckers. All the more so, considering what’s happened. But they aren’t budging from inside until someone unrolls the red carpet. Maybe they’re praying in there where it’s one hundred degrees and   …Continue Reading

This Banyan Tree this banyan tree as old as generations before the oldest dynasty it knows rituals from bamboo annals of the divine rites of the yellow king of slavery of nobility and under the umbrella of this tree of mysteries I took shelter in the chambers of echoing millennia and I ate the roots   …Continue Reading

Texts from Ulrika Nielsen´s book BRIEF TEXTS ON THE OPEN AND UNSETTLED Translated by Olivia Olsen THE GREATEST Trouble with the big questions What is your greatest wish? What event has most profoundly changed you? Which was the happiest day of your life? The smaller ones come closer How do you take off your shoes?   …Continue Reading