Writer/Polyglot/Uprooted/Pushcart nom 23/LL Wigleaf top 50 23/SL @BridportPrize 21&24. 🎤Host & Producer Chosen Tongue/ Assoc dir @SalonEurope
Brussels, Belgium
Joined November 2008
- Tweets6.6K
- Following3.5K
- Followers2.3K
- Likes43.3K
Pinned Tweet
Thank you so much Jon for this opportunity and for the amazing reading you and Emma did of two of my stories. It was a wonderful experience! 🙏🙏🙏
OUT NOW! Italian author Eleonora Balsano (who lives in Brussels) speaks & writes in multiple languages - but feels most @ home writing in English. While it's not her mother tongue, it's a language she's come to believe affords her more freedom as a writer. shortstorytoday.com
Eleonora Balsano retweeted
An interview with me, "The translator as spiritual medium," is out today as "Chosen Tongue" (@norami) podcast:
open.spotify.com/episode/1Im…
Catching my breath after the wonderful salon in Berlin last night! Amazing readings and such a warm welcome every time. @SalonEurope is a magic place.
Eleonora Balsano retweeted
All I want is to hold your hands and feel your nearness. A modest wish? And yet it does not cleave the night and the distance.
Franz Kafka, 1913.
Eleonora Balsano retweeted
Epic online salon tonight!
Book launches! European literature quiz! Amazing readings!
You should all have been there....
Eleonora Balsano retweeted
New Flash by @CitizenBego
"Winter lay down fat in its white robe as if to die. The war was over, and he ached to get home after years of service in foreign parts."
fracturedlit.com/train-home/
Loved this! Perfectly bittersweet.
Read "My Husband, My Ex-Boyfriend, and the Love of My Life Walk into a Bar" written by @kimmagowan and illustrated by @amybookwhisper1. tinyurl.com/3ep2nhhb
Eleonora Balsano retweeted
We also have many exciting online events coming up.
First up is Café Littéraire: European Book Club, 7 October. We're discussing the excellent I Who Have Never Known Men with our host @norami
Just started reading a book about Joyce Lussu, a fascinating writer I have only just discovered. ‘Tis the poem she wrote for the love of her life, anti-fascist intellectual Emilio Lussu.
‘The long slumber was before
Meeting you.
Now that I’ve found you
I don’t want to sleep
I want my eyes open
To see your face
Now that you’ve smiled to me
I want to always think’
I got married long before dating apps were invented & I often think about how my life would have been affected. Would have I used them or recoiled from? Do everyone now uses them?
Eleonora Balsano retweeted
So, my dearest girl, it is evening again after a sleepless afternoon, nothing more is written, only to this girl to whom one always wants to write, from whom one always wants to hear, with whom one always wants to be, in whom one would most like to disappear.
Franz Kafka, 1912
Eleonora Balsano retweeted
We're online for our salon this evening. If you're at a loose end join us! Our first reader is @AbbyManzella
There is always a moment, when we start writing in a second language, that we self-censor, feeling the magnitude of our incompetence. We think we’re not ready, that we’re not ‘good enough’, as Heidi Marjamäki, author and associate fiction editor of @okaydonkeymag, explains in this last episode of Season 4. In the end, we realise there is no such thing as good enough when it comes to language, whether it’s our mother tongue or a second one. Language is always evolving, and so are we.
Thank you all for listening and for writing such lovely reviews of the show. I’ll be taking a short break for the summer, but the list of guests for Season 5 is growing…
Listen here: open.spotify.com/episode/5s8… or on any other podcasting platform
Had fun writing this month’s @okaydonkeymag newsletter about writing in a second language, check it out if you have time!
It's OKD newsletter day! Our July issue features reflections and advice from @norami on writing in a new language, plus our usual roundup of shoutouts and our June recap.
Read it now: okaydonkeymag.beehiiv.com/p/…
How do we translate the self? And how do we write in two languages at the same time, blending and playing within a same text? Listen to the lovely @SnehaKantaS in today’s episode of Chosen Tongue!
Listen here open.spotify.com/episode/2Ml… or on any other podcasting platform.
Eleonora Balsano retweeted
Happy first of the month! Free subs are back open until we hit our monthly cap.🌻
Send us your best flash fiction or poetry: okaydonkeymag.com/submission…
OKD is always open for tip jar ($2.50) and expedited ($4) submissions! Fees help us pay our contributors and cover site expenses.
Lidija Hilje started writing in English in 2019 and her debut is out in July with @simonschuster & @Dauntbooks! Don’t miss her interview: her optimism and resilience are both inspiring & contagious!
You can listen to Lidija’s episode here open.spotify.com/episode/1BW… & on all podcasting platforms!