Authors

Terry Adams

Fresh from the Fountain

Terry Adams was born in Tullamore, County Offaly, Ireland on the 15th March 1957. He is married with three daughters. Terry has lived in Luxembourg since 1990. He began writing after the death of his father in 1976 and has penned novels, collections of short stories and books of poetry. His true passion is poetry, a passion passed on to him by his father. His latest book From Verdun to the Somme, his eleventh, is another collection of poetry. Even after so many years living abroad, Tullamore and its people still feature in many of the pieces.

SUSAN ALEXANDER

Fresh from the Fountain

Susan Alexander is a native New Yorker and that remains a core part of her identity. She came to Luxembourg from Wall Street in 1989 to work in a bank. Hated the bank job. Loved Luxembourg. She is still here.

She has had a non-linear career path. She is a graduate of Wellesley College (Hillary Clinton is a classmate) and Princeton Theological Seminary (She is an ordained Presbyterian minister). She recently (2018) completed a PhD in Social Sciences. Her thesis topic: Intellectual Capital and the Future of Luxembourg. In between her B.A. and PhD, she spent three years as a psychotherapeutic resident at a New York City psychiatric clinic, headed Derivative, Fixed Income and International Securities Research at a Wall Street investment bank, co-founded a web site and web application development company and launched her own independent research firm.

She is currently working as an expert for the European Commission, assessing public policy and funding proposals. She has authored thirteen books and is working on a trilogy set in Luxembourg. Her writing tends to focus on women who have led complex and interesting lives, their relationships and the choices they have made.

Jess Bauldry

Fresh from the Fountain

Jess Bauldry was born in 1980. She is British (and soon Luxembourgish). She has worked as a journalist since 2005 but her love of creative writing dates back to childhood. She has had short stories published in a UK anthology and two UK literary publications. She writes firstly for herself because she loves exploring how things could have turned out if this or that had happened – a sort of escape.

Jessica Becker

Fresh from the Fountain

Jessica Becker was born in Luxembourg on July 2, 1982, and has dual citizenship in Luxembourg and the United States. After finishing high school in Luxembourg, she went on to study literature in Washington, DC, and complete a PhD in Hispanic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley. Her poetry has been published in the United States and in Brazil. She currently resides in Alameda, California.

Catherine Bennett

Fresh from the Fountain

Catherine Bennett has recently retired from her work as a psychotherapist with her own cabinet here in Luxembourg. She has worked for years within the mental health sphere, having started with the NSPCC and the National Childbirth Trust as fundraiser and counsellor.

Her first published work was when she was 8 years old in The Puffin Club magazine with her poem ‘Sizzling Snakes’. Since that time she has written stories, diaries, novellas and novels. She has yet to break out into the publishing world, but her retirement gives her the timeto realise this ambition.

She is currently working on a book about cultural and historical responses to death. This intrigues her from a psychological and sociological perspective.

Her other work, more or less complete, is an autobiographical work, entitled Desperate Housewives of Luxembourg. It is intended to be funny, not just for those who star in it, but to others as well!

Jodie Dalgleish

Fresh from the Fountain

Born on 11 July 1968, Jodie holds dual citizenship in New Zealand and Ireland. She has been widely published in the South Pacific as a curator and critic of contemporary art and literature. There, she was also a finalist, and winner, of local short story contests, while also the author of a periodic arts column in a local newspaper. Before leaving New Zealand in 2015, she completed a Master of Creative Writing and held a six-month writer’s residency at NZ Pacific Studio. In Europe – where she has dedicated herself to writing full-time – Jodie has continued to be published as an essayist, specifically for Contemporary Hum, a Paris-based online platform dedicated to NZ arts in a global context, and Landfall, the South Pacific’s leading literary journal. She is also writing in response to her new home of Luxembourg and exploring European modes of storytelling more generally. In addition to creating collections of poetry and stories, she is also currently writing a novella and novel set in Luxembourg.

Shehzar Doja Syed Shehzar M. Doja

Fresh from the Fountain

Shehzar was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and currently resides in Luxembourg as a poet and founder/editor-in-chief of the literary journal The Luxembourg Review. As a resident of Luxembourg, he was selected to represent the country (with Jean Portante) on a pan-European platform for a festival project commissioned for the city of Amsterdam. His work has appeared in numerous publications worldwide (New Welsh Review, The San Antonio Review, Dhaka Tribune: Arts&Letters, Delano, Monsoon Letters, Sticks and Stones etc) and has won places in several literary and a theatrical competition (1st prize for The Madman’s Lament – which he wrote, acted in, & directed – in the Symbiosis Festival, Pune, India). He was a featured poet in ‘SpokenWord Paris’ in 2016 & a NewAge (newspaper) ‘Youth Icon’ in 2017. He was on the Jury Panel for the Literary Prize at the Printemps des Poètes festival in Luxembourg, 2018 and is currently working on an upcoming book project on the Rohingya community. His first book Drift (edited by Sudeep Sen) was published by UPL/Monsoon Letters in 2016.

Ruth Dugdall

Fresh from the Fountain

Born on 16 June 1971, of British nationality, Ruth studied English Literature at Warwick University (UK) before training as a probation officer. She decided to concentrate on her writing career when her novel The Woman Before Me won the 2005 Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger. Her novels are informed by her direct experiences working within the Criminal Justice System and are published internationally. She lived in Luxembourg between 2014 and 2016, during which time she wrote and published Nowhere Girl, a crime thriller about human trafficking, set in the city. She currently lives in California, and is working on her eight novel.

Joanna Easter

Fresh from the Fountain
High Five!

Joanna Easter was born in Wales in 1996 to a Luxembourgish mother and a British father. She has been writing stories for as long as she can remember writing anything at all, her literary career starting out with her illustrious work The Pumpkin Who Ran Away, an unsurprisingly titled story about a pumpkin who ran away, written by the author when she was seven years old and hand-stapled together into a small volume with orange cardboard covers. Since then she has been a bookish child, a pedantic teenager, a depressed chemistry student, a slightly less depressed bookseller, a freelance gardener, and an occasional teacher of writing workshops. She currently lives in Scotland with her partner and is still writing stories, albeit generally ones of slightly more challenging subject matter.

Larisa Faber

High Five!

Fabienne Faust

High Five!

Born in 1978, Fabienne Faust studied English and Italian literature at the universities of York and Bologna. In England she wrote reviews and other contributions for the on-campus poetry magazine Point Shirley. Back home in Luxembourg, she stuck to her love of literature by reading keenly and attending creative writing classes hosted by the writer Jean Portante. Her first book of poetry, Tu Veux Danser (Éditions Phi, Differdange) was published in November 2014. Fabienne loves her job as a teacher of English. Her poetry centres around the theme of loss and the futility of all regret. In haunting images she describes the frailty of human relationships and the seeming impossibility to forge enduring emotional connections.

Tullio Forgiarini

Fresh from the Fountain

Tullio Forgiarini was born in Luxembourg in 1966. His father is Italian, his mother Luxembourgish. He studied history in Luxembourg and Strasbourg (specialisation: Ancient History), and has been working as a teacher at Lycée du Nord in Wiltz since 1989. Forgiarini has written several novels, mostly dark, sarcastic, satirical,humorous ‘neo-noir’ crime fiction in French: Miss Mona (2000); La Ballade de Lucienne Jourdain (2001, 2016), Carcasses (2004), Karnaval (2005), La deuxième mort de Ernesto Guevara de la Serna dit le Che (2007). Amok (2011), a trashy, tragic road movie, is his first novel in Luxembourgish. It is based on his work with school drop-outs or traumatised adolescents. Amok was awarded the European Union Prize for Literature in 2013 and adapted to the screen as Baby(a)lone by Donato Rotunno in 2015. In 2016, Forgiarini published De Ritter an der Kartonsrüstung, a philosophical tale for children. His play Du ciel, a fierce and hilarious look at our attitude towards refugees, opened the season of Théâtre Ouvert de Luxembourg in October/November 2016. Lizardqueen, his first novel in German, was published at the same time. Forgiarini writes reviews and columns for different papers; he was a regular contributor to the satirical weekly Feierkrop.

Dylan Harris

Fresh from the Fountain

Dylan Harris was born in Burton-in-Trent, UK, just before Sputnik flew. His poetry collections include Big Town Blues, Anticipating the Metaverse, the Liberation of [ Placeholder ] (all published by The Knives, Forks and Spoons Press, Newton-le-Willows, UK), and Antwerp (published by wurm press, Dublin, Ireland). He operates corrupt press, and likes beer.



Françoise Glod

Fresh from the Fountain

Françoise Glod was born in Luxembourg in 1980. She studied English and American literature and theory in the UK. During this time, she also did a course in creative writing. She now works as an English teacher in Luxembourg City and has published stories in Cahiers Luxembourgeois.

Tom Hengen

Fresh from the Fountain

Tom Hengen was born 15 December 1973 in Luxembourg, and grew up in Dudelange. He studied English and American literature at the University of Wales in Aberystwyth, where he came into contact with a vibrant and and eclectic literary scene. Apart from attending a creative writing course at uni, he took part in organising and reading at a number of events in Aberystwyth and in Wales. He also co-founded and co-edited the university’s Interchange Poetry magazine, and had a few of his poems published in various magazines. After returning from the UK, he was awarded the Luxembourg National Literature Prize for his collection Explorations in C in 2011, which was published by Éditions Phi, and he has had other poems in print in a few national newspapers.

Pierre Joris

Fresh from the Fountain

Born 1946. While raised in Luxembourg, he has moved between Europe, the US & North Africa for over half a century now, publishing more than 50 books of poetry, essays, translations & anthologies — most recently, Stations d’al-Hallaj (translated by Habib Tengour; Apic Editions, Algiers, 2018); a translation of Egyptian poet Safaa Fathy’s Revolution Goes Through Walls (SplitLevel, 2018); The Book of U /Le livre des cormorans (with Nicole Peyrafitte, 2017); The Agony of I.B. (a play commissioned & produced by the Théatre National du Luxembourg; Editions PHI, 2016); An American Suite (early poems; inpatient press 2016); Barzakh: Poems 2000-2012 (Black Widow Press 2014); Breathturn into Timestead: The Collected Later Poetry of Paul Celan (FSG 2014); A Voice full of Cities: The Collected Essays of Robert Kelly (co-edited with Peter Cockelbergh; 2014, Contra Mundum Press) & The University of California Book of North African Literature (volume 4 in the Poems for the Millennium series, coedited with Habib Tengour, 2012). Forthcoming are Adonis & Pierre Joris: Conversations in the Pyrenees (Contra Mundum Press, 2018), the two final volumes of his Paul Celan translations, Microliths (Posthumous prose) from attemverlag (2018) & The Collected Earlier Poetry (FSG 2020), as well as a volume of essays, Against Tyranny (Alabama University Press, 2019) & a Pierre Joris Reader (BWP, 2020). When not on the road, he lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, with his wife, multimedia praticienne Nicole Peyrafitte.

Jos Kayser

Fresh from the Fountain

Born 1964. Luxembourger. Author of Prinzessin Charlotte (Editions Schortgen, 2017), D’Bomi ass dout and De Mann deen ëmmer laacht (Editions Schortgen, 2018). Kayser writes in Luxembourgish, French and English.

Georges Kieffer

Fresh from the Fountain

Georges Kieffer was born 1 January 1962 in Luxembourg, works as a teacher of English and lives with his wife, kids and cats in Mondorf-les-Bains. He studied English, Spanish and Fine Arts at Stirling University, Scotland (Mphil in 2011). He has published Schierbelen (1998, PHI – joint winner with Georges Hausemer’s Iwwer Waasser of the Concours Littéraire National in 1997); Eidel Aerm, wann d’Liewe mam Doud ufänkt (2001, PHI essais, kollektiv); D’Kaya (2003, PHI); Biergop, biergof (2007, op der lay); D’Mëtt vum Land (2016, SNE éditions).

Jean-Marc Lantz

Fresh from the Fountain

Jean-Marc Lantz was born in Luxembourg City in 1964. A French citizen by birth, he became a Luxembourger at the age of 18. He studied Anglo-American Literature in Aberystwyth (Wales) and has been teaching English since the early nineties. After numerous exhibitions of his paintings both at home and abroad he is now trying his hand at writing in English and Luxembourgish. An inveterate Southerner, Jean-Marc currently works at the Lyçée de Garçons in Esch/Alzette and resides in sunny Bettembourg. In 2019 he published his novel Magnetosaurus Nostalgodon in Luxembourgish and English with Capybara Books.

James Leader

Fresh from the Fountain

James Leader was born in 1964 in England. He has lived and worked as a teacher of English and French in North America, Latin America, the Middle East and Europe. His poem ‘Fear’ won the Newdigate Prize for Poetry at Oxford University in 1984, a prize previously won by Matthew Arnold and Oscar Wilde. He was runner-up in the Ballymaloe International Poetry Competition with his poem ‘Phoebe and the Troopship’ which was selected by Billy Collins out of 3,400 poems from around the world. In 2012 he came second in the Luxembourg National Literature Competition with his short story ‘Rendition’. His young adult novel The Venus Zone won the annual Luxembourg National Literature Competition in 2016. His novel The Mysteries of Gogos has been a set text in the Belgian Baccalaureate, and his novel Chickendance has been taught in Luxembourg. He has done literary translations of prose and poetry from French, Spanish, German, Greek, Italian. In 2018 his poem ‘Goethe in Rome’ was selected from over five thousand poems as a runner-up in the Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Prize.

Noëlle Manoni

Fresh from the Fountain

A Luxembourger, Noëlle was born on 12 February 1999. She passed her Examen de fin d’études secondaires at Lycée Classique de Diekirch (section A) in summer 2018 and intends to pursue further education at the Royal Military Academy in Brussels. Her poem ‘Farewell’ won the first prize in the Black Fountain Writing Competition for young people, Young Voices. It was also short-listed for the Prix Laurence in Bettembourg. She wrote the poem in remembrance of a horse (called Amazonia), a former show-jumping mare which died because of her age (32 years), after Noëlle had hoped she would find strength again during the summer holidays.

Agnes Marton

Fresh from the Fountain

Born in 1965, Agnes is a Hungarian-born poet, writer, librettist, Reviews Editor of The Ofi Press (Mexico), founding member of Phoneme Media (USA), Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (UK). Recent publications include her collection Captain Fly’s Bucket List and four chapbooks with Moria Books (USA). Her work is widely anthologized, some examples being: ‘Alice – Ekphrasis at the British Library’, ‘Anthem: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen’, ‘Poems for Pussy Riot’. She won the National Poetry Day Competition in the UK, and an anthology she edited (Estuary: A Confluence of Art and Poetry) won the Saboteur Award. Her short story ‘Marina di San Cresci’ was called exceptional in the Disquiet Literary Contest (USA). Her opera (composer: Vasiliki Legaki) premiered in London. In the award-winning poetry exhibition project ‘Guardian of the Edge’ 33 accomplished visual artists responded to her poetry (The Court of Justice of the European Union, Luxembourg).



She has been a resident poet on a research boat in the Arctic Circle, at the Scott Polar Research Institute (The University of Cambridge, UK), and also in Ireland (the Tyrone Guthrie Centre), Iceland (Gullkistan – Residency for Creative People), Italy (La Macina Di San Cresci), Spain (Arreciado – Wool Symposium), Portugal (First Impression) and Canada (Ou Gallery; Ayatana Artists’ Research Program). Her poem Fish Speech, Remember? was performed by the BBC Singers (composer: Dan Chappell).

Robbie Martzen

Fresh from the Fountain

Robbie Martzen was born in Luxembourg in 1969. He is currently working as a teacher in his native country, but keeps wondering what he might be doing in a parallel universe. He likes nature, animals, and sometimes people. He also enjoys writing about all of the above. He has published a small number of poems and texts in anthologies and journals and has been long- and shortlisted in various competitions, such as the Blue Nose Poet-of-the-Year Competition in London (‘Highly Commended Poet’ in 1999) and the Concours Littéraire National in Luxembourg (shortlisted in 1996).

Claudine Muno

Fresh from the Fountain

Born in 1979, Claudine holds the Luxembourgish nationality. Her first book, The moon of the big winds, was published in 1996. She continued to write in German, French and Luxembourgish. The novel frigo won the Prix Servais in 2004. Her latest publications were Komm net kräischen (2016) and Sou wéi et net war (2019). She also writes song lyrics, mostly in English, and played/still plays in several bands (The Luna boots, Monophona).

Jeffrey Palms

Fresh from the Fountain

Jeffrey Palms was born in 1986 in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan. In his twenties he lived in Dublin, Lisbon, Washington, Edinburgh, and Maastricht before settling in Luxembourg in 2015. He writes for the d’Lëtzebuerger Land on culture and the expat experience, and has had reviews and creative pieces published in the Luxembourg Times, HeadStuff, and Vulture. He is currently working on a collection of short stories.

Anne-Marie Reuter

On the Edge

Born in Luxembourg, Anne-Marie Reuter studied in London and Warwick. In 2010, she completed a PhD in English and Comparative literature. Her thesis entitled Fictions of Authority – Teachers, Enchanters and Mentors in selected works of Iris Murdoch and A. S. Byatt, explores the connections between teachers and authors who, as storytellers, engage with, seduce, entertain, challenge, lead or are led by pupils, readers and characters. Today Anne-Marie works as an English teacher at Lycée Robert-Schuman. In 2017, she co-founded Black Fountain Press. She has published a collection of flash fiction and short stories, On the Edge (2017). She has translated, from French into English, poetry by Lambert Schlechter, one day I will write a poem (2018), and from English into Luxembourgish, the play Disko Dementia by Larisa Faber (2018).

Jeff Schinker

Fresh from the Fountain

Jeff Schinker was born in 1985 in Luxembourg. So far, he has published a book, Retrouvailles, as well as several short stories in Luxembourgish and French anthologies and magazines. He has written a play, Theseus, organizes several cycles of readings and works for the daily newspaper Tageblatt, where he is responsible for the cultural pages. In 2019, he published Sabotage, a short story collection, in French, English, German and Luxembourgish. He doesn’t believe in sleep.

Lambert Schlechter

one day I will write a poem
Fresh from the Fountain

Lambert Schlechter was born in Luxembourg in December 1941. He is a retired teacher and lives in Wellenstein near the Moselle River. He has published some 30 books of poetry, essays, chronicles, short stories in Luxembourg, Québec, Belgium and above all in France. His work has been translated into Armenian, Bulgarian, Italian, Bosnian, Spanish and Arabic. Black Fountain Press published a translation of a selection of ‘neuvains’ in 2018: one day I will write a poem. Translation: Anne-Marie Reuter; Illustrations: Lysiane Schlechter

Sandra Schmit

Fresh from the Fountain

Born in 1972, Sandra is a literary researcher, translator and writer. She has an MA in Medieval English and French literature and works at the Luxembourg Literary Archives in Mersch, where she is part of the team responsible for the online dictionary of Luxembourg authors. She has co-curated exhibitions on Luxembourg literature and published two commented editions of literary classics as well as an English translation of 19th century Luxembourg-American poetry, Prairie Flowers. Her first novel, A Winter Tale, was published in 2005, followed by its sequel, Rights of Spring, in 2011. She has received great acclaim for her translation of Guy Rewening’s Your Heart of Ice is Hot as Vice (Éditions Guy Binsfeld, 2017).

Robert Schofield

Fresh from the Fountain

Born in 1963, Robert grew up in Southampton, on the south coast of England, and then studied languages at Oxford, coupled with sporadic working in a German electronics factory, and milking sheep for Roquefort cheese. He then started a long career in banking, first in the UK and in Africa, and now in Luxembourg. He has also been writing fiction for the best part of two decades. His first novel, The Fig Tree and the Mulberry, was a prize-winner in Luxembourg’s Concours littéraire national, and was published by Éditions Saint-Paul. It tells a story from a forgotten part of the second world war, when children from British cities were evacuated alone overseas, in this case to New Zealand, to escape the threat of invasion. His children’s book The Hoogen-Stoogen Tulip, including satirical drawings from the Luxembourg illustrator Carlo Schmitz, was published by Editions Guy Binsfeld in 2013, both in English and in Luxembourgish, and was shortlisted for the annual children’s book prize. It tells the story of the first supposedly black tulip, coveted and bought by Fattmann van Biggestbanken, the most powerful merchant in all Amsterdam. Chaos ensues when the tulip blooms and is revealed to be not quite what it seemed.

Cecile Somers

Fresh from the Fountain
High Five!

Cecile Somers is a copy writer and voice artist best known for telling people “The person you are trying to call, is not available right now”. She was born in the Netherlands in 1963, but grew up in Luxembourg where she attended the European School. She studied English Literature and Linguistics at Leiden University, and followed several writing workshops, which led to the publication of her first children’s book Vijf citroenen en een varkentje (De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam). She is an IMDB-listed scriptwriter, having written the scripts for animated films The Golden Horse and Apple Pie, The King & I (in production). A member of the Creative Writing Group Luxembourg, she is currently working on a screenplay starring cleaning ladies and librarians, and trying to finish her underground cult novel Cornflakes for the Underworld (formerly known as The Cactus Chronicles), about people living inside the Cactus supermarket at Belle Étoile. It’s an underground cult novel because many people have heard about the book but very few have actually read it (the latter on account of it still being unfinished).

Wendy Winn

Fresh from the Fountain
High Five!

Wendy Winn is a poet, writer, journalist, artist and radio show host who has lived in Luxembourg for as long as she has not lived in Luxembourg. When she was not living in Luxembourg she was living in the USA, which is where she comes from. She identifies as an American but also as a Luxembourger and would like to live in a world where people were kind to each other no matter where they came from or how they ended up where they are. She has been writing since she could hold a pen, and working as a journalist since she was in college. She taught English at Wright State University in Ohio, her alma mater, and briefly for a language school in Luxembourg. In June 2019, she won the LEAPA sonnet contest and most recently, two of her poems were published in the July 2019 edition of the award-winning literary magazine The Vincent Brothers Review. She has had two short plays performed in Luxembourg, and has published other short stories and poems in Luxembourg and abroad.

Illustrators

Lysiane Schlechter

one day I will write a poem

Lysiane Schlechter was born in Luxembourg and studied fine arts in Paris, Vienna and Brussels from 1963 to 1968. She has been living and working in Rotterdam since 1972. Her work has been shown at exhibitions in the Netherlands, in Germany, Belgium and France. In two or three dimensions, her work is inspired by the beauty and precariousness of life.

Louise Gras

High Five!

Louise Gras was born in Luxembourg in 1999 of Franco-Belgian parents. She passed her diplôme de fin d'études secondaires (Languages & Literature) at Lycée Robert-Schuman in June 2019. Louise likes reading, writing, drawing, film making, directing and acting. In July 2019 she released her first film, ZONE. The Point is to Get Out Of It, which she directed and produced. She now plans to do a BTS Cinéma & Audiovisuel.