Hanover City of Refuge welcomes its sixth ICORN resident Atefe Asadi
Writer, editor, and translator Atefe Asadi from Iran is the new ICORN resident in Hanover. Asadi is the sixth ICORN resident in the German city, thanks to the support of the Hannah Arendt Scholarship.
With a positive end to 2022, Hanover City of Refuge welcomed Iranian writer, editor, and translator Atefe Asadi as the city’s new ICORN resident. Asadi will spend the next two years in Hanover, continuing her literary and translation work during the ICORN residency which is a cooperation between the city’s Kulturbüro/Cultural Office and the independent cultural organisation Literaturhaus Hanover in Künstlerhaus/House of Artists. Atefe is the sixth ICORN resident in Hanover and the tenth recipient of the Hannah Arendt Scholarship.
Having been part of the International Network of Cities since 2000, Hanover was one of the founding members of ICORN when the organisation was established in 2006. As part of this long-lasting commitment to freedom of expression, Hanover launched the Hannah Arendt Scholarship in 1999 which has, so far, helped to host ten guest writers, six of whom have been ICORN residents, including Carlos A. Aguilera, Christopher Mlalazi, and Mohamad Alaaedin Abdul Moula.
Atefe Asadi, Hanover’s latest ICORN resident, has already started researching opportunities for cooperation with local publishers and book fairs, expressing interest in exploring new literary genres, such as New German Literature (Die Neue Deutsche Literatur).
Asadi was forced to leave Iran following increasing pressures on aspects of her professional and personal life. Given the focus of her work, addressing Iran’s social, political, and religious issues, these challenges intensified in the aftermath of the murder of Mahsa Amini in September 2022. Prior to this, Atefe’s work was officially rejected by Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance which declared her writing unprintable. As her stories and literary reviews could only be published on online platforms, such as ‘Consefr’, and ‘Saayeha’, Asadi is looking forward to and working towards publishing her collections in German during her ICORN residency in Hanover.
For more information on Hanover City of Refuge and Atefe Asadi, please visit their ICORN city and ICORN resident profiles.
