UmLinzRum – ‘Round About Linz

Writing Workshops

October 2007 – October 2009

“UmLinzRum” is a series of German-language writing workshops being staged through 2009 in selected partner cities and capitals of culture. In addition to bringing literary impressions of these cities to Linz, “UmLinzRum” also shows how literature can be applied.
The primary focus is on the process of working out ideas in an imaginative way with the aim of utilizing simple means to illustrate the extraordinary qualities of partnerships and relationships.

As has already been shown in Budweis (2006) and Sibiu (2007), these workshops can encourage participants to form sustainable literary circles, to establish ongoing relationships and to engage in a process of reciprocal intercity exchange that will endure beyond the year 2009.

Each writing workshop is custom-tailored to the particular city in which it is being staged and is oriented on the respective possibilities available there. In each, a different theme—a historical, geographic, economic or cultural point of departure, so to speak—is designed to function as a stimulant to the creative process.

The workshops are held on five successive days. The first two sessions serve as an introduction to the project, and are dedicated to Linz and the respective partner city. Beginning on the third day, it is above all the technique of writing that is imparted to workshop participants, and the impact that space and time have on the writing process. The entire workshop makes use of all available media, various different approaches as well as examples at hand. The last two days are then dedicated exclusively to the writing process, whereby participants will work together in groups and also get individual attention from the workshop leader.

The texts produced in each workshop will be presented publicly by the authors in cooperation with StifterHaus Linz as part of a program that will, if possible, include participation by artists from the partner cities currently living in Linz.

At the final event in Summer 2009, one author from each of the partner cities will be invited as a representative of his/her city to present these texts as well as to provide impressions and give accounts of the prospects for the future.

Selected texts from all of the workshops together with photographs of the artists will be published during the Capital of Culture year 2009 in a multilingual volume. This work will be available in German-speaking Europe as well as in the authors’ homelands. Thus, the authors will get the opportunity to reach audiences beyond the borders of their respective countries.

Organizers // StifterHaus and Linz09
Idea / Concept // Oskar Terš

Dates / Locations //
July 08 / Niþnij Novgorod
September 08 / Essen
February 09 / Istanbul
April 09 / Stavanger
July 09 / Vilnius

Oskar Terš was born in 1973 and lives in Vienna. He studied German language & literature, history and law in Vienna, Berlin and Colmar. From 2002 to 2005, he was an instructor in German language & literature at the Universities of Tuzla and Bihaã. There, he founded the Ars Vivendi theater group, served as its director, and organized its tours of ex-Yugoslavia, Hungary, Latvia and Austria. He also organized “Literaturpfade” book tours by German-speaking authors through Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia. In 2004, he edited (together with Juli Zeh and David Finck) an anthology of stories from Bosnia entitled “Ein Hund läuft durch die Republik. Geschichten aus Bosnien.” Since 2005, he has been organizing and conducting writing and theater workshops and discovering German-speaking enclaves in Eastern Europe.