Literature in Diaspora. What is the Place of Words?

Intensified processes of migration generate in recent years new diasporic forms of literature. In the increasingly diverse metropole of contemporary Berlin, authors from all corners of the world create in languages from elsewhere. They live in the German capital, but their words are connected to other locations – to other communities of readers, other landscapes, institutions, publishers, literary journals, to other conversations, to elsewhere. Their words are out of place. Or better: the place of literature is for them a question. This public discussion brings together local diasporic authors from Berlin to talk about their experiences and reflections concerning the location and dislocation of literature. How do they experience the distance from their readers? What does dislocation mean for writing? How does diaspora or sometimes even exile manifest themselves for the author, in language, in the text? Does the diasporic situation require or offer to develop diasporic literature, exilic forms of language, new communities of letters?