29^th Leukerbad International Literary Festival

Collaborations

Every year, around a dozen domestic and foreign institutions contribute to a rich, high-caliber program at Leukerbad Literary Festival though joint projects, collabo­rations and contact. In 2015, the Odessa Literary Festival was first staged—a co-production by the Leukerbad International Literary Festival and the International Literature Festival Berlin.

Our Network

LCB Literarisches Colloquium Berlin

Künstlerprogramm des DAAD Berlin

CTL Centre de traduction littéraire de Lausanne

Spycher: Literaturpreis Leuk

Schulhausroman / Roman d’école

Palais Valais

Fondation Rilke

Médiathèque Sion

MEEL

Internationales Literaturfestival Berlin

Internationales Literaturfestival Odessa

Kultur Wallis / Culture Valais

Reportagen

ZAP Brig / Orell Füssli

“Quand je pense à toi, je vois de la neige qui n’est pas là”
Students from Leukerbad and Crans-Montana present their collective novels

Since 2021, young Leukerbaders have been part of the festival’s line up. Each year, a group of current secondary school students write a collective text that is presented at the festival. These emerging writers are joined by their peers from other places: in 2023 the spa town welcomed students from Monthey and in 2024 students from a primary school in Zurich. This year, literature will bring together writing neighbors: “Leukerbad meets Crans-Montana”! Under this motto students from the higher-level classes in both towns have written a schoolhouse novel. Hot off the presses, the works demonstrate how close and yet far apart these two world-renowned spa towns are.

The students were supervised by a href="authors/rolf-hermann.html">Rolf Hermann and Thomas Sandoz. We asked both authors to tell us some tales out of school.

Hermann: “The Leukerbad schoolhouse novel Where Love Begins can be summarized in this way: L. writes letters, many letters to M., to love, to life. They are about strong feelings, family chaos, the highs and lows of growing up. Between first infatuations, stress at school, hobby horsing, and TikTok dancing, a story unfolds that goes straight to the heart. Here is a quotation, a bilingual one no less:
Liebe ist wie ein frisch bezogenes Bett. Liebe ist wie Klopapier, das immer reisst. Wie eine Schultasche, die ich zu Hause vergessen habe. Wie Chicken Nuggets ohne Chicken. L’amour, c'est comme une horloge sans aiguilles. Quand je pense à toi, je vois de la neige qui n’est pas là.”

Sandoz: “At this time, on the other side of the Trubelstock, two 9 a.m. class of the Crans-Montana school collectively imagined an electrifying story that blends adventure, mystery, humor, and love. While waiting for the bus, four young people who don’t know each other see a strange image. There is Sandra, a skating champion who suffered a serious accident, Kyara, one of the richest girls in the region, Kiwi, a renowned rapper, and Hugo, a rather clumsy English tourist. They soon become convinced that the image they’ve seen is a message they have to decode to find a treasure. And the solution might be in Leukerbad. They decide to go… on foot, taking the mountain path that passes through Brevon, Plammis, and Pfarsching. The four adventurers will be hungry, cold, afraid, they’ll be surprised by nightfall, they’ll have difficult encounters, most of all, they will get to know each other. A record for the schoolhouse novel: no less than 27 unique voices have woven this singular text called The Secret Message in which there is also mention of a luxury automobile, an abandoned bunker, mushrooms that can make one insane, magic books, and even of dahus…”

Teachers: Stéphanie Dias, Matea Klaric (Leukerbad), Laurence Emery, Cindy Nanchen (Crans-Montana)
Words of welcome: Ralph Lorenz (Gemeinde-Vizepräsident Leukerbad), Juventa Zengaffinen (Schulleiterin)
Moderation: Richard Reich

Spycher: Leuk Literature Prize

The Spycher: Leuk Literature Prize is awarded annually by the Leuk Castle Foundation and is still unique in its form: the prizewinners are repeatedly invited to Leuk over a period of five years. During this time, special relationships develop with the town and its people—often resulting in long-term friendships.

Felicitas Hoppe, for example, has been returning to Leuk regularly for years and has made a lasting literary declaration of love to the town with her story Der beste Platz der Welt. Thomas Hettche, on the other hand, set his novel Sinkende Sterne in Valais. These examples show how much this special literary prize creates space for encounters, inspiration and mutual appreciation—and many more stories could be added.

The collaboration with the Leukerbad Literature Festival will also be continued and expanded in 2025: For the first time, the Schloss Leuk Foundation and the festival will jointly welcome budding booksellers from the WKS Bern to Leuk and Leukerbad to introduce them to the work of the foundation and the festival.

Those awarded so far are: Zsófia Bán, Lukas Bärfuss, Joanna Bator, Marcel Beyer, John Burnside (1955–2024), Mircea Cărtărescu, Radka Denemarková, Ulrike Draesner, Gerhard Falkner, Lavinia Greenlaw, Durs Grünbein, Felicitas Hoppe, Stefan Hertmans, Thomas Hettche, Michael Hofmann, Barbara Honigmann, Helena Janeczek, Abbas Khider, Barbara Köhler (1959–2021), László Krasznahorkai, Thomas Lehr, Sibylle Lewitscharoff (1954–2023), Martin Mosebach, Marie NDiaye, Ulrich Peltzer, Michael Roes, Daniel de Roulet, Gilles Rozier, Judith Schalansky, Michail Schischkin, Aleš Šteger, Katharina Schultens, Alissa Walser, Iris Wolff and Adam Zagajewski (1945–2021).

The jury—consisting of Thomas Geiger, Sabine Dörlemann and Christian Döring—will announce the new prizewinner in June.

The Centre de traduction littéraire de Lausanne—CTL

The Centre de traduction littéraire de Lausanne (CTL) was founded in 1989 with the aim of providing a platform for discussion on literary translation and at the same time promoting dialogue between theory and practice and among translators. Its field of activity is broad and varied: in addition to conferences and academic research projects at the University of Lausanne, the CTL organises public readings with authors and translators from all languages. When awarding the special prize for mediation to the CTL in 2019, the Federal Office of Culture said: “The CTL highlights the importance of translation and addresses its challenges, its richness and the joy it brings.”
The CTL website provides up-to-date information from the various areas of literary translation for young and professional translators (workshops, readings, news about the profession).
As part of the partnership that has existed since 2010, which aims to contribute to exchange between the language regions of Switzerland, the CTL is inviting the author Marie-Jeanne Urech and her translator Lis Künzli to the Leukerbad International Literary Festival.