9th Weiden Poetry Translation Workshop: Lizar Begoña

The 9th Weiden Poetry Translation Workshop will take place from October 23-27, 2025. It has been held annually since 2017, and aims to raise awareness of modern poetry in Basque, Catalan and Galician in other linguistic areas.

This year the Basque writer Lizar Begoña, the Catalan Jaume Coll Mariné and the Galician Jesús Castro Yáñez will participate. They will present fragments of their works and then the poems will be translated into different European languages with the help of translators from Germany, Italy, Serbia, Slovenia and Spain.

The workshop, organised by the Chair of Sociology and Applied Linguistics at the University of Leipzig and the Department of Ibero-Romance, will have the collaboration of the Etxepare Basque Institute, the Institut Ramon Llull, the Xunta de Galicia and the Marià Villangómez Visiting Chair of Catalan Studies at the University of Leipzig.

Lizar Begoña is a poet and writes since her youth. She holds a degree in Fine Arts from the Basque University (EHU), and spent a year at the Academy of Fine Arts at Ravena. Afterwards, she studies Art and Creation at the EHU. She has collaborated in various BilbaoArt projects, and is currently a Basque language professor. In 2020, she won the third Donostia Kultura poetry contest, with the publication of the book ‘Aro Beilegia’ (Balea Zuria). In 2022 she published the book ´Gepardo Japoniarrak´ (Susa) and that same year she won the Igartza Award with her novel project ´Itzalkinak Eguzkitan´, published by Elkar in 2024 as ´Mundu zitalaren kontra´.