Trondheim

The city of Trondheim, located in central Norway, has been a city of refuge and member of ICORN since 2004. Since then, the city has been home to four guest writers; Chechen novelist Musa Mutijev, Iranian poet Asieh Amini, journalist Mohammad Rahbar, and Libyan poet Ashur Etwebi. Guest writers in Norway are granted the possibility to stay as permanent residents. They in turn must complete the introduction program, a program designed for all resettled refugees who are given protection in Norway. This is run by the Municipality of Trondheim through the Center for Qualification of Immigrants (INN- Kvalifiseringssenter for Innvandrere).

Trondheim city of refuge and its guest writers collaborate with many local cultural entities and participate in numerous literary events. Among these are the city’s Litteraturfest (Festival of Literature) and the Norwegian Writers' Centre (Norsk Forfattersentrum) Literature Festival. Books written by ICORN writers located in Norway are usually published by the publishing house Communicatio, which is also located in Trondheim.

Trondheim’s four ICORN writers span a wide range of literary production;

Musa Mutaev, from Chechnya came to Trondheim with his family in 2004 and has become a resident of the city. He was a teacher and deputy editor in the art and literary magazine Orga in Grozny. Mutaev debuted as a writer in his home country with the short story Wolf, which formed part of a compilation titled Solar Eclipse. He is the leader of Chechen PEN in exile. Mutaev is the first Chechen translated into Norwegian, his collection of short stories Kunta’s Shadow was released in 2007 and the novel Honorary Medal in 2011. 

Asieh Amini is from Iran. She came to Trondheim with her husband and daughter in December 2009. Amini is a journalist and poet, human rights activist and a women's activist. She has already managed to distinguish herself through several contributions to the Norwegian online magazine Ny tid and through large spreads in the local newspaper Adresseavisen. She has published two poetry books in Norway, Come not to my dreams with rifles in 2011 and I miss missing you in 2013. Amini’s husband is the award winning photojournalist Javad Montazeri.

In September 2014 Amini received the Norwegian price “Ord i grenseland,” given annually to a female fiction writer or poet who is persecuted, threatened or imprisoned. In January 2012, she received the Oxfam Novib / PEN International Prize for her work. The price is awarded annually to journalists and writers who live under threats and persecution in their homeland, or who have been forced to flee because of their socially critical views. UNESCO named Amini the most prominent young Iranian poet in 2005.

Mohammad Rahbar is a journalist from Iran who arrived in Trondheim in late 2011 after living a couple years in exile in Malaysia. He is educated as a lawyer but worked as a journalist for over 16 years. He had to change jobs more than 10 times as the Iranian authorities closed down every newspaper and magazine he worked for, until he was finally forced to leave his country. He arrived in Trondheim with his wife, journalist Farzaneh Bazrpour. Rahbar writes for the online newspapers BBCpersian and Roozonline. He is currently (primo 2015) finishing his first novel.

Ashur Etwebi was born in Tripoli, Libya in 1952. He is a poet and translator, but also a medical school graduate, who worked as a physician and as a teacher until he retired early in 2010. He is one of the most prominent contemporary Libyan writers, having published 9 volumes of poetry, one novel and translated 5 volumes of books into the Arabic language including Japanese Haiku in four hundred years, works of Vicente Huidobro and Quatrains and Ghazals of Jalal Al-Dein Rumi and works of Kabir. His own poems have been translated into several languages. Ashur Etwebi arrivedin Trondheim in 2015.