etb English
Theatre
Berlin International Performing Arts Center

Donald Ray Pollock reads from Knockemstiff.

Spanning a period from the midsixties to the late nineties, the stories in Knockemstiff feature a cast of recurring characters who are woebegone, baffled and depraved – but irresistibly, undeniably real. Rendered in the American vernacular with vivid imagery and a wry, dark sense of humor, these thwarted and sometimes violent lives jump off the page at the reader with inexorable force. … Donald Ray Pollock presents his characters and the sordid goings-on with a stern intelligence and a bracing absence of value judgments. … Knockemstiff is a genuine entry into the literature of place.

Pollock’s voice is fresh and full-throated, and while these stories travel negligible distances, even from one another, the best of them leave an indelible smear The New York Times – Halb Americana-Kunstwerk, halb evangelikale Exploitation. … Wo immer gebetet wird in Pollocks Hardboiled-Krimi – es breitet sich ein Atem der Fäulnis aus. … Pollock erweist sich mit diesem Roman als Logiker des Wahns. Der Spiegel  –  Hier ist sie, die perfekte amerikanische Kurzgeschichte: Donald Ray Pollocks Erzählzyklus Knockemstiff haut einen glatt aus den Schuhen. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Donald Ray Pollock is an American writer. Born in 1954 and raised in Knockemstiff, Ohio, Pollock has lived his entire adult life in Chillicothe, Ohio, where he worked at the Mead Paper Mill as a laborer and truck driver until age 50, when he enrolled in the English program at Ohio State University. While there, Doubleday published his debut short story collection, Knockemstiff, and the New York Times regularly posted his election dispatches from southern Ohio throughout the 2008 campaign. The Devil All the Time, his first novel, was published in 2011. His work has appeared in various literary journals; he received numerous awards including the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Knockemstiff and the Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere for The Devil All the Time.

Photo: Jean Luc Bertini

THE US EMBASSY LITERATURE SERIES

Dina Nayeri reads from her novel A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea (Ein Teelöffel Land und Meer, mare-Verlag)

Growing up in a small rice-farming village in 1980s Iran, 11-year-old Saba Hafezi and her twin sister Mahtab are captivated by America. They keep lists of English words and collect illegal Life magazines, television shows, and rock music. So when her mother and sister disappear, leaving Saba and her father alone in Iran, Saba is certain that they have moved to America without her. But her parents have taught her that “all fate is written in the blood,” and that twins will live the same life, even if separated by land and sea. As she grows up in the warmth and community of her local village, falls in and out of love, and struggles with the limited possibilities in post-revolutionary Iran, Saba envisions that  there is another way for her story to go. Somewhere, it must be that her sister is living the Western version of this life. And where Saba’s story has all the grit and brutality of real life under the new Islamic regime, her sister’s life gives her a freedom and control that Saba can only dream of.

Dina Nayeri was born in the middle of the revolution in Iran and moved to Oklahoma at ten-years-old. Her debut novel, A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea, was published in 2013 and translated into 13 foreign languages. Her work is published or scheduled for publication in over 20 countries and has appeared in numerous magazines like Granta New Voices or The Southern Review. Dina Nayeri holds both an MBA and a Master of Education from Harvard, and a BA from Princeton.  Now she  is at work on her second novel, also about an Iranian family,  at the Iowa Writers Workshop where she is a Truman Capote Fellow and Teaching Writing Fellow.