Thank You
Kosmopolis
27 March 2017
We have to say goodbye to this year’s K17 really happy about the results. We say goodbye to an edition that has improved in public and enthusiasm: not just a few of you have thanked us for a celebration in which the different words that form the amplified literature have interacted in harmony. So it’s our turn to thank you too: thank you for having accompanied us, for sharing your feelings. Thank you for attending the conferences, for participating in the workshops, for making louder the literature with your voice (in person and in the networks): to the more than 10.000 people who have visited us, we have to add the three million audiences we have had on Twitter and all the people who have followed us live streaming.
It has been five very intense days with first class guests. PJ Harvey’s recital has been the culmination of a festival where we have relied on experts in animal and vegetal intelligence such as Stefano Mancuso, Hope Hahren or Carl Safina. We have enjoyed the lectures of great names in literature, such as John Banville, Pierre Lemaitre and Jean Echenoz. We have discovered the new voices of European literature and we have seen how you can think of vignettes. We have talked about new maternities and new feminisms with Lynne Segal, Bel Olid, Orna Donath, María Llopis and Brigitte Vasallo, and Kim Stanley Robinson has explained us how literature can make us dream of a future beyond climate change. Werner Herzog has given us its volcanic and accurate version of the world and we have travelled to Scotland with the poets and musicians of Neu! Reekie! Again, the Bookcamp, has continued exploring the changes in the editorial ecosystem and the incorporation of narratives in virtual reality has been a great success. And the Alpha Channel has allowed us to attend premieres and screenings of different literary traditions.
K17 edition has come to an end, but Kosmopolis continues. On April 20th, we will count on Enrique Vila-Matas and Teju Cole in a lecture some days before the celebration of St. George. And in June Liz Howard, Anakana Schofield, Louis Jolicoeur and Nicolas Dickner will visit us for a session devoted to Canadian literature. In addition, the lectures, conferences and discussions can be retrieved online and the networks will remain open and active. The reason is because literature, and all its words, is more alive than ever.