Opening Lecture by Maria Stepanova

In-between: displacement as a second language

Based on her experience of exile, writer and poet Maria Stepanova examines displacement as a defining condition of the present. In this talk, she explores it as a linguistic and imaginative threshold, and asks how poetry survives among languages, and what kind of promise it can find in the space in between.

Displacement is an increasingly defining condition of our time: an ultimate reality for millions of people, a general condition that defines our perceptions of belonging, connection and exchange (and, above all, the role and meaning of language). In this talk, Maria Stepanova will be reflecting on displacement as a geographical and political condition, but also as a linguistic and imaginative one. How does it shape our expectations of literature? Is it possible to overcome linguistic borders? How does poetry survive among languages, and what kind of promise does it find in the space that separates them?

Maria Stepanova is one of the leading voices of contemporary Russian literature, currently in exile in Berlin. She writes poetry, essay and prose that explore the relation between history, memory and language. Her book In Memory of Memory (Fitzcarraldo, 2021) is a literary essay that explores family history, collective traumas and how individual and cultural memory construct our identity. Her latest book is The Disappearing Act (New Directions, February 2026), a novel about a middle-aged woman writer in exile. She is the founder and editor of Colta.ru, Russia’s first independent digital cultural media outlet, blocked since the start of the war in Ukraine.

Moderated by Marta Marín-Dòmine. The event will open with the reading of a Mercè Rodoreda excerpt, by actress Màrcia Cisteró.