In cooperation with the Danish Arts Council’s Committee for Literature and The Writer’s Center, Fall for the Book is honored to host an evening featuring three of Denmark’s most distinguished writers — marking their first-ever joint appearance in the United States.

Pia Tafdrup

Pia Tafdrup has published more than 20 books over the last three decades, including the poetry collection Dronningeporten (Queen’s Gate), which won the 1999 Nordic Council Literature Prize, Scandinavia’s most prestigious literary award. That book is among several of her works that has been translated into English; her latest book to appear in the U.S. is Tarkovsky’s Horses and Other Poems, which compiles two of her Danish collections and will be published in late April 2010. Tafdrup was named a Knight of the Order of Dannebrog in 2001 and won the 2006 Nordic Prize from the Swedish Academy. In 2007, she appeared alongside writers Don DeLillo, Nadine Gordimer and Salman Rushdie at the PEN American Center’s 2007 World Voices Festival. Kyle Semmel of The Writer’s Center interviews Tafdrup here at First Person Plural.

Naja Marie Aidt

Naja Marie Aidt has also won the Nordic Council Literature Prize, awarded to her in 2008 for her short story collection Bavian (Baboon). The collection also earned the 2006 Danish Kritikerprisen (Critics’ Prize). In addition to that collection and two others, Aidt’s work spans a variety of forms and genres. She has published eight collections of poetry, beginning with Sålænge jeg er ung (As Long as I’m Young) in 1991; several plays and children’s books; and the screenplay for the 2005 movie Strings. Her story “Bulbjerg” was included in the anthology Best European Fiction 2010 and was singled out in a review by Time Magazine.

Simon Fruelund

Simon Fruelund is the author of two story collections, Mælk (“Milk”) and Planer for sommeren (“Summer Plans”), and two novels, Borgerligt tusmørke (“Civil Twilight”) and Verden og Varvara (“The World and Varvara”). For nine years he worked as an editor at Denmark’s largest publishing house, Gyldendal, but is now writing full time. In the U.S., his stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Brooklyn Review, The Bitter Oleander, A River and Sound Review, Redivider, Absinthe, and The Portland Review. Two of these translations have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

This historic joint reading is scheduled for Thursday, September 23, at 7 p.m. at The Writer’s Center, 4508 Walsh Street, Bethesda, Maryland. The event is hosted by Fall for the Book and The Writer’s Center and sponsored by the Danish Arts Council’s Committee for Literature. A reception will follow.

For more information on Fall for the Book — with events September 19-24 at George Mason University’s Fairfax Campus and at venues throughout Northern Virginia, D.C. and Maryland — please bookmark the festival’s webpage here or join the mailing list on the left of the homepage to have news delivered directly to your inbox.

Andrew Wingfield, author of the novel Hear Him Roar, will debut his upcoming short story collection, Right of Way, at this year’s Fall for the Book Festival. Winner of the Washington Writers Publishing House 2010 fiction prize, the collection is set in Cleve Springs, a “gentrifying neighborhood” modeled in part on Wingfield’s own Alexandria neighborhood and exploring the “complexity and variety of transformations” that are occurring in such communities as well as the hopes, expectations and memories that old timers and newcomers alike are projecting onto the area’s houses and businesses and public spaces. In addition to his books, Wingfield’s nonfiction has appeared in Terrain, Weber Studies, Wild Earth, The Antioch Review, ISLE, and other magazines. A graduate of George Mason University’s MFA Program in Creative Writing, Wingfield is currently an assistant professor in New Century College, Mason’s integrative study program. For more information on Right of Way, check out an interview with Wingfield included in  Fall for the Book’s new audio/video gallery of festival authors past and future.

Also added to the 2010 festival:

• Poet Don Bogen with his new collection, An Algebra
• Bestselling novelist Bernice L. McFadden, author of Sugar, with her latest book, Glorious
• And novelist, short story writer and cultural theorist D. Harlan Wilson, whose works include the critical study Technologized Desire: Selfhood and the Body in Postcapitalist Science Fiction and the fiction collection They Had Goat Heads

For more information on the festival — scheduled September 19-24 at George Mason University’s Fairfax Campus and at venues throughout Northern Virginia, D.C. and Maryland — please bookmark Fall for the Book’s webpage here or join the mailing list on the left of the homepage to have news delivered directly to your inbox.