West-Eastern Divan

Meetings between Western and Middle Eastern writers continue to be sensitive encounters which demand a high degree of open-mindedness from all sides. The project "West-Eastern Divan" has organised five intensive writing conferences for German and Arabic, Farsi and Turkish speaking writers between 2005 and 2007. By visiting and travelling through each other's countries, they became acquainted with one another's culture and had the opportunity to hold joint readings and write about one another, each in his/her own language.

Project coordinator: Thomas Hartmann
Writer selection committee: Heinz Ludwig Arnold, Sven Arnold, Björn Blaschke, Navid Kermani, Hans Gerhard Hannesen, Friederike Pannewick, Joachim Sartorius, Stefan Weidner, Thomas Lier

Venues: Berlin, Munich, Cologne, the foreign writers' cities of residence
Schedule: January 2005 - December 2007