Two ICORN residents in Sweden awarded stipends

Tsegabrhan Goitom receives Natur & Kultur stipend

Last month, Tsegabrhan Goitom, the Eritrean journalist and novelist who recently finished his ICORN residency in the Swedish City of Umeå, was one of 11 authors who were granted a scholarship by the Stockholm-based publishing foundation Natur & Kultur. The sum of the stipend received by Goitom is 100,000 SEK and is awarded to both celebrate the writers’ literary efforts and enable the continuation of their work.

Since arriving in Sweden in 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsegabrhan Goitom has written and published two books Wetsia'ta Hitsan (2020) and Aywedkhan’yu Zanta Helen (2021). Upon receiving the news of the Natur & Kultur stipend, Goitom expressed his joy and excitement for the future. Since the scholarship’s establishment in 2011, ICORN residents, including Mahdieh Golroo (2021), Ashraf Bagheri (2019), Suzanne Ibrahim (2018), Iman Al-Ghafari (2017), Jude Dibia (2016), Svetlana Alexievich (2014), and Anisur Rahman (2011), have also been awarded the stipend.

Swedish PEN awards the Prince Wilhelm’s stipend to Ali Thareb

Iraqi poet and performer, and current ICORN resident in Jönköping, Sweden, received Swedish PEN’s Prince Wilhelm’s stipend in late December 2022. The sum of the stipend is 25,000 SEK and will contribute to Thareb’s future creative projects as his ICORN residency draws to a close.

During his ICORN residency, Ali Thareb has been involved in several solo projects and collaborations with other writers and artists, including ICORN residents. Shortly after Thareb arrived in Jönköping in 2020, he performed his poems at the fifth anniversary of ‘The Square’ in the town of Värnamo. Since then, Ali has participated in talks at the Gothenburg Book Fair and performed at the ‘A Night with Buddha’ event in Stockholm alongside fellow ICORN residents amongst others.

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