The President of the Foundation for socio-economic and intellectual programs and chairman of the Union of Writers of Moscow, Sergei Filatov, ahead of the 13th Forum of Young Writers in Russia and Abroad spoke about its program. In 13 years more than two thousand authors have participated in the forum. In 2009, the Russian writers were joined by a large group of writers from foreign countries (mainly from the CIS). Each year the Forum is resumed by collective collections "New Writers", and a series of "Young Literature" is published. Publishing the works of the Forum in the Russian literary journals has become a good tradition.
The forum was organized by the Foundation of socio-economic and intellectual programs together with the literary magazines "Arion", "Problems of Literature", "Friendship of Peoples", "Star", "Flag", "Foreign Literature", "Campfire", "Moscow", "Our Contemporary" , "Neva" ,"New World", "October"," Modern Drama”, the online media "Circle A", "Continent", "Prologue" with the support of the Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communications and the Institute for Civil Society . The Forum will bring together 176 young writers from 67 regions of Russia and 17 foreign countries. There will be 16 workshops.
"At the beginning of the project "Young Writers of Russia" there was the hope that we will prepare a young group of writers that will make a turning point, in general, in our literature. From the period when it did not exist there was some time after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when we began to read mostly books that have come to us from our writers from abroad once exiled from the Soviet Union. But all the time we lived in anticipation of new literature," Filatov said.
"But the emergence of new literature, in general, quite frankly, has been delayed. Moreover, the disorder of a writer’s life, the lack of social protection, the lack of status of the writer in Russia today - all these problems are, in general, quite acute, and they've come out to the surface. So today there is a serious need to create a new literary community, which would include all the elements that help the development of literature and delivering the writer's work to our readers. There will be libraries, publishing houses, a book distribution system there. I believe that the basis in this case should be our literary journals as the most professional, the most affordable and the most familiar ones. And in this regard, of course, I personally hope for a new writer's world, which would rise with the help of our youth," he said.
"I recall that starting this job, I just set myself the task of dividing this young writer's world into neither left nor right, neither patriots or Westerners. So we are working with all the literary magazines that exist today in Moscow and St. Petersburg - I mean the central journals: "Our Contemporary”, "Moscow", "Neva”, "Star", and "New World". For 13 years, we have lived, in general, a normal life; our guys choose their master classes or magazines with which they want to work and with which they want to deal. We invited 182 people to our forum of young writers. They will deal with 16 master classes. There are master classes in children's literature, drama, criticism, translation, poetry and prose - our 14 or 15 magazines that we have. The organizers were joined by the magazine "Campfire", a children's magazine, since mostly Voskoboynikov gives master classes on children's literature. Accordingly, the magazine with which he works is a co-organizer of our event. Of course, I had to start my presentation with someone who supports and inspires us in this work. This is the Federal Agency for the Press, which from the first day has helped us financially, organizationally and most importantly - it helps us spiritually in supporting this topic. Those activities that they hold, the international exhibitions - very often we are attracted to this work to ensure that we have the possibility to show our youth literature. At the end of the year we published seven books. We continue this practice. All books are prepared by the young writers themselves, as well as the event. Coordinators... The activities outside of Moscow, in general, are organized by young writers. A collection of drama was published for the first time this year, it's called "Eight", after the name of one of the performances by Vladimir Zuev on the death of the royal family. It included ten works by our young playwrights, the brightest, the most interesting ones. There is the collection of young writers of the North Caucasus , called "Taste of Quince", it was edited by Lydia Bamatgireeva, a young critic, she is a doctor of philological sciences. We have called the book after one of the stories of a very talented young writer Suleiman Musayev, a Chechen writer. I think he should have, of course, a great future. There is the collection of young writers "But…" that I mentioned, which included 30 works by young authors. And there are the books written by one author: Valery Karapetyan from St. Petersburg, with two novels and short stories under the title "In Heaven", Ilya Odegov, a young writer from Kazakhstan, with stories under the title "Any Love", and Alexei Shepelyov, with two stories under the general title "True Love". The forum will be held in our country, from October 21 to 25 , and on October 26 the group will leave. The forum program is very rich. In the first half of the day we have workshops. The second half of the day is a meeting with writers, public figures, specialists. Oh, and, of course, on the first day we will meet with Mark Rozovsky’s theater, which, generally speaking, is growing before our eyes, and our audience has fallen in love with the theater and is waiting for it. We have tried to change the program, but all the same we have sympathy for this theater, so this year we will again meet with them," he said.
