Sarah Byrne & Jente Posthuma

Paper People is a forthcoming essay collection by Sarah Byrne that proposes paper as a living organism and a tribute to the psychological, social and bodily connections Sarah has made with this material through the course of her life especially as a reader. As a child with dyspraxia, the author experienced an incessant spatial violence where the body was both agent and receptacle of terror. Paper People reconstructs and revisits spatial realities through fiction, family and friendship and documents Sarah’s many drafts to make a world she could move in.

What if one half of a pair of twins no longer wants to live? What if the other can’t live without them? This question lies at the heart of Jente Posthuma’s deceptively simple novel What I’d Rather Not Think About. The narrator is a twin whose brother has recently taken his own life. She looks back on their childhood, and tells of their adult lives: how her brother tried to find happiness, but lost himself in various men and the Bhagwan movement, though never completely. In brief, precise vignettes, full of gentle melancholy and surprising humour, Jente tells the story of a depressive brother, viewed from the perspective of the sister who both loves and resents her twin, struggles to understand him, and misses him terribly.

Jente’s attendance at West Cork Literary Festival is supported by the Nederlands Letterenfonds / Dutch Foundation for Literature as part of their New Dutch Writing programme