The Ljubljana UNESCO City of Literature is thrilled to announce the two writers selected for this year’s Writer in the Park residency: Herlina Suhesti (Jakarta) and Valeska Angelo Torres (Rio de Janeiro). The two writers were chosen by a selection committee from an impressive pool of 100 applicants from 30 cities of literature. As the committee mentioned, the overall quality of applications was rather remarkable. The Ljubljana UNESCO City of Literature office and the selection committee would like to express their delight in being able to invite a writer from Jakarta, which stood out as one of the cities with the highest number of submissions, and Rio de Janeiro, a recently added member city of the network.
Herlina Suhesti, Jakarta, Indonesia
Herlina Suhesti (1982), pen name Herlinatiens, is a writer from Indonesia. She has published several novels and volumes of poetry. Her first novel, The Edge of a Lesbian (2003), is considered transgressive of sexual and religious norms in Indonesia. It is a controversial “coming out” of Indonesian gay and lesbian writing, becoming a local bestseller and a reference source for researchers from other countries studying LGBT groups in Indonesia. Her poetry debut was nominated for the best book of poetry in Indonesia in 2020.
Herlina Suhesti is also a dedicated researcher, particularly interested in identity politics. Her unique background in Indonesian culture, coupled with solid training in social movements and Indonesian literature, allows her to navigate seamlessly between Western and Indonesian perspectives, as well as between social movements and cultural contexts. She has been active in the Witness and Victim Protection Agency of Indonesia and is currently a consultant for the Manuwani Foundation, which provides assistance to sex workers in Indonesia with the support of Women’s Fund Asia.
“I have always been interested in art, culture, and women and social issues,” she says. “I saw how Eastern women looked at European women. How women in our country consider the standards of intelligence, prosperity, and beauty to be in Europe. Therefore, I am interested in doing research to write a novel about how European women view women in the East, especially Indonesia.”
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Valeska Angelo Torres, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Valeska Angelo Torres (1996) is a poet, writer, performer, assistant editor at 7Letras, educator, curator at the CEP 20.000 (Centro de Experimentação Poética) poetry collective, and Library Science student at UNIRIO. She participated in the Poetic World Championships in Montevideo (Uruguay) and in the International Poetry Festival in Rosario (Argentina), where she was a writer-in-residence. In 2017, she was a finalist of the Slam das Minas. She is the author of O coice da Égua (7Letras, 2019) and Plutônio-239 (7Letras, 2022). Her work is featured in the anthology 29 Poets of Today (Companhia das Letras, 2021).
O coice da égua presents itself with the urgency of poetry that translates the urban reality of the outskirts and exposes the experience faced with everyday violence in a naked and raw perspective. Valeska Angelo Torres describes it as “a strong and faithful portrait of our contemporary society, the brutality of the streets, and the experience of moving through the city of Rio de Janeiro as a black woman.”
Plutônio-239, on the other hand, captures scenes from an inflamed world. In Valeska Angelo Torres’ words, “the reader is faced with a harsh reality from the great fire in Australia to the oil spill on the coast of northeastern Brazil, passing through groups that live on the social margins both in the outskirts of Rio and in the cities of Rwanda.”
Like the hybrid beings (half human, half machine) in her writings, Valeska Angelo Torres uses a language that is, in her own words, “at the same time raw like flesh and refined like metal, describing surveillance by drones, the voluntary incorporation of mechanical parts into human bodies, and even a call for a cyborg army.” Her poetic narrative visualizes climate change and social issues in the coming future, in which an ongoing war puts the poor population at risk. Her writing, including elements of cyberpunk, is very sensory because she chooses “not to spare the reader from the smells, sounds, and tastes of the dystopia that knocks on the door,” as she puts it.
“I was raised in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro,” Valeska Angelo Torres says. “At the age of 26, I started living in the city center, where I witnessed experiences related to territory, such as living close to the sea. Rio is my biggest inspiration in writing, as the city invites me to a dichotomy between brutality and beauty which I feel daily. In my works, I write about violence, landscapes, friendship, romantic and spiritual relationships. Currently, history and temporal aspects involving my ancestral relationship with the city are my interests, being the theme of my next book of poems.”