James Johnston

Launch of newleaf 19, 29 June 2005

Considering that Germany were playing Mexico for third place and Brazil were battling it out against Argentina in the final of the Confederations Cup and it was 29 degrees Celsius outside, an audience of over 60 for the launch of newleaf 19 wasn't too bad. What Ballack, Frings and Adriano missed was a super evening's entertainment which kicked off (oh, pur...lease) and ended with great songs from singer-songwriter James Johnston, who just gets better and better. He's currently putting his first CD together, and when it appears we'll be plugging it on these pages. And yes, there was literature as well, with the Bremen authors from the mag presenting their own texts and reading some of those from out of town/country. Highlights? Julia Scheit reading her four-language poem 'Between Home', which won the City of Essen European Capital of Culture Prize in May. (For more details of this, see our News 2005 page.) Plus other prize-winners: Julia Boll and Katrin Oellerich reading Kathrin's Daniil Pashkoff Prize honourable-mentioned two-voice poem 'The Tiger/The Kids'; and Fran Kreuser reading an abridged version of her story 'Angel' (Daniil Pashkoff third prize prose: see the Latest News page.) Anna & Trish read heartrendingly tragic rejection letters they had received about their movie storyboards from small-minded Hollywood studios. The whole event was filmed by fischbach76 productions on behalf of the secret police.

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