Tuesday, October 12, 2021

Remembering Matthyas Jenny (1945-2021)

On several occasions over the years, I worked on organizing events with the Basel writer, publisher, and literary impresario Matthyas Jenny, who passed away on Sunday at 76. As the organizer of the Basel Literature Festival and later of the Kleines Literaturhaus in the basement of his bookstore, the Bachletten Buchhandlung, he always had an open mind for events and for ideas about how they could be presented. In 2003, he asked me to write to Seamus Heaney to invite him to read in Basel in 2004; I received a letter from Heaney a month or so later, who graciously declined – my letter from a Nobel laureate, thanks to Matthyas Jenny. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 12 October 2021)


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