European Literature Days 2026 | Panel Discussion – When the World fractures: Writing as an Act of Repair

07 PM, Sat 16 May 2026
Level 2, Deutsches Haus
33 Lê Duẩn, Sài Gòn ward, HCMC
Registration link

From the organizer:

Loneliness is not merely a ruptured internal state wherein one is abandoned by others and stripped of the ability to converse with oneself. It is also the consequence of losing our shared world, a state where we can no longer see ourselves in reality.

The fulcrums upon which we forge our identities are increasingly unsteady: the collapse of historical borders, the drifting of individuals across foreign lands, and the dissolution of singular definitions of nationhood, home, and gender. Are these forces creating violent ruptures in how we connect to the world, or do they offer an opportunity to unearth our true selves?

When reality splinters, what language achieves?

In this panel, the writers will discuss the act of writing as an ultimate endeavor: dissecting the fractures of generation, gender, and the self to reclaim the capacity for internal dialogue, to discover beauty, and to chronicle the experience of engaging with other cultures, ultimately forging cross-border solidarities among strangers.

This event is part of European Literature Days, an annual literary festival organised by the European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC) in Vietnam.

** Language: English (Vietnamese translation)

About the speakers

Sasha Marianna Salzmann was born in Volgograd, Russia, and at the age of ten migrated to Germany with their family, where they have become one of the most relevant voices on the theatre and literary scene. They studied Theatre and Literature at the University of Hildesheim and later specialized in playwriting at the University of the Arts in Berlin. Their theatrical work, acclaimed internationally, stands out for its unique treatment of universal topics such as memory, identity or the migratory experience. It has been translated into more than twenty languages and awarded with Theatre Prize of the Academy of Arts 2020 and the Kleist-Preis literary prize in 2024. Both of their novels Beside Myself (2017) and Glorious people (2021) were nominated for the best German Book Prize and received the Literaturhäuser Prize and Hermann-Hesse-Literaturpreis in 2022. Sasha Salzmann also collaborates with various German media, curates festivals and has been a resident at the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin.

Thibault Clemenceau is a traveler and a writer born in 1989 in France. He moved to Vietnam in 2014. His love for the outdoors and cycling naturally led him to undertake long-distance journeys. In 2019, he embarked with his wife, Trân Nguyên Khanh Nguyên, on a 16,000 km honeymoon from France to Vietnam crossing some countries such as Iran, India and Myanmar.
His book written about this adventure, Un Duo Vers l’Inconnu, received the René Caillé Award for the best adventure book

Tran Tien Cao Dang – Vietnamese writer, translator, and lecturer in translation and creative writing, award-winning translator with over 20 years of experience.

About the moderator

Quyên Nguyễn is a Doctor of English literature and an independent researcher and critic. She holds a PhD in English literature from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore with a dissertation on James Joyce. Her research interests include literary theory, James Joyce, Irish literature, modernism, postmodernism, translation studies, and contemporary literature. Her works have been published by Palgrave Macmillan. Quyen Nguyen is also an English-Vietnamese translator with more than 14 years of experience; her published translations include “What we talk about when we talk about love” by Raymond Carver (co-translated), “Atonement” by Ian McEwan, “Middlesex” by Jeffrey Eugenides.

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