The Beginning
In September 2015, during the Copenhagen Literature Festival, poet Roxana Crisólogo made a presentation of the project Sivuvalo, Is This Finnish Literature?, which she had started four years earlier in Helsinki. Among the audience was translator Petronella Zetterlund, who was amazed by Roxana’s energy and conviction and the boldness of Sivuvalo, a multilingual project that was mapping, promoting and publishing immigrant language writers in Finland for almost four years. Sivuvalo had gathered a large network of writers, and had had success in different venues in Helsinki attracting new and large audiences to multilingual multimedia poetry readings, a concept created by producer Daniel Malpica, former member of the Sivuvalo team. During the lunch after the exposé on Sivuvalo, Roxana and Petronella got together and initiated a conversation about literature, translation, democracy, equality, and the conditions in the Nordic literary fields for foreign language writers. That conversation is still going on today and takes place within the frame of Nordic Literature project Nordic Exchange in Literature, NOXLit, where we invite writers, translators, editors and cultural producers to take part in the debate.
NolitchX becomes NOXLit
As of 2020, the project’s name is Nordic Exchange in Literature, NOXLit, and today we focus on highlighting the multilingual diversity in Nordic Literature.
Inspired by Sivuvalo in Finland, the project started in 2017 as Nordic Literature in Change and Exchange, NolitchX, with cultural association Tre Tärningar (Three Dices, founded by Azita Ghahreman, Lalo Barrubia tand Petronella Zetterlund), Elizabeth Torres of Red Door and Efrín González of Casa Latinoamericana in Copenhagen, writer and translator Mazen Maarouf in Reykjavik, and, of course, Sivuvalo as partners and the aim to make visible the literature written in immigrant languages by authors residing in the Nordic region. Later in 2017, literary collective Ós Pressan in Reykiavik was incorporated as a collaborating partner.
As of 2020, the project’s name is Nordic Exchange in Literature, NOXLit, and today we focus on highlighting the multilingual diversity in Nordic Literature. Our aim is to conect writers, translators, editors, cultural producers and artists through events, talks, meetings, and other literature based activities to promote the linguistic diversity in Nordic literature both in the Nordic region and internationally.
The partners who constitute the core of the NOXLit network are literature asociation Sivuvalo Platform (Finland), PhD Sacramento Roselló-Martínez (Denmark), and cultural producer Petzetera (Sweden).