“To Be Continued” is a collaborative story about a historic villa in Austria written by several writing centers in Europe.
What happens next?
That’s the question around 100 pupils from Austria, Ireland, Denmark, Italy and the Republic of Moldova will shortly be asking themselves. These young European writers are forming an international writers’ collective and are coming up with a fictive story about Villa Ivan & Franziska Rosenthal in Hohenems, Austria. The story will be started by a school class from Austria before it gets passed on, like a baton in a relay race, from one country to the next. Pupils from Denmark will be picking it up from the cliff-hanger left behind by the Austrians. At the end, the result will be a book published in all the languages of the participating countries. The project was initiated by the Austrian organizations literatur:vorarlberg netzwerk and W*ORT Lustenau and will be enriched through the input from numerous European writers, literary translators, schools and partner organizations.
How it all started
Two schools from Austria are took part in the project – one writing the beginning, one the end of the story. In between the story will travel through four other European countries, where pupils between the ages of 10 and 13 will add their touch to the story. In addition, the Austrian pupils will guide their fellow European writers through the historic villa, which is currently being restored into a literary house, but is not yet accessible to the general public. All participating young people will therefore get an exclusive introduction to the setting by their Austrian peers via live stream on 21st November 2019, before the writing process starts.
Inspiration from published authors
In order to get the young people started with the writing, each group will take part in a workshop with two published authors. How to start a story, how to end it with a cliff-hanger, how to continue someone else’s story, do’s and don’ts of writing an exciting piece of literature, are just some of the areas the authors will cover. In addition, the groups will also be visited by the literary translators, the task of whom will be to translate the story as it stands so far from one language to the next. The actual writing and the development of the story line will however be exclusively carried out by the young writers’ collective.
The story unfolds
Following the guided tour through the villa, the first group from Austria dove into their week of writing. At the end of this week the story was passed on to Denmark, where, after a workshop with two local authors, the Danish group will endeavour to write the story forward and then pass it on to Italy. The story will continue to grow and unfold as it travels from Italy to Ireland to the Republic of Moldova and then back to Austria, where a second Austrian school will write an ending. Whether this will be a sad, funny or mysterious ending will, like the whole plot, be completely in the hands of the young writers.
The first publication by the young European Writers’ collective
Once the pupils have written their last sentences, placed the last full-stop and are happy with the story, the text will be translated into the languages of all participating countries before it is passed on to a graphic designer and sent for printing. The finished product will be a book, which the European writers’ collective will jointly present at a virtual reading, streamed into all participating countries. The project will live on through the tales surrounding it which will no doubt be told by all participants. The book will be available at the local schools, libraries and book shops.
to be continued: project starts November 2019, project ends June 2020
Partner organizations: Fighting Words (Dublin, Ireland), Fronto del Borgo (Turin, Italy), Ordskælv (Copenhagen, Denmark) and various schools, authors and translators in the participating countries
This project is being supported by Raiffeisenbank Im Rheinthal.
For more information, visit www.literatur-vorarlberg-netzwerk.at and www.w-ort.at