Flurina Badel and Selina Beghetto
Flurina Badel (*1983, Lavin) is a multilingual author. After completing her initial training as a journalist, she earned a Master of Fine Arts at the Institute Art Gender Nature at the HGK in Basel and studied at the Institute for Language Arts at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. In 2019, her first poetry collection, tinnitus tropic (editionmevinapuorger, Zurich), was published and awarded the Swiss Literature Prize in 2020. Her debut novel, Tschiera (Chasa Editura Rumantscha, Chur), was released in 2024. She has been a recipient of various grants, including Wintertuin (2024) and the Fondation Jan Michalski (2023). Flurina serves as a mentor for the Bolo Klub 24/25 and designed the "Lavuratori da scriver litterar" writing course for Lia Rumantscha. She teaches the module "Scriver experimental" and has led several seminars, such as "Multilingualism and linguistic autobiography in poetry" at Banaras Hindu University and the masterclass "Multilingualism as a power tool for literary writing" at ArtEZ University of the Arts in Arnhem. www.flurinabadel.ch
Linda Bühler was born in 1985 in the canton of Neuchâtel. After studying classical philology and working as a teacher for several years, she placed writing at the centre of her life. She then trained at the Swiss Literature Institute in Biel and graduated in June 2024. Linda Bühler draws inspiration from her current experiences of motherhood and daily life to uncompromisingly depict worlds that delve deep into family relationships. As a member of AJAR since 2022, she values co-creative writing. She has taken part in numerous readings and is currently working on her novel, in parallel with a project bringing together Swiss and Hong Kong authors. In her characteristic manner, as calm as it is clear, her writing analyses inheritance and lineage – that which was passed on from our ancestors.
Project
"Ester" (working title)
"Ester" (WT) is a longer bilingual prose text. The project explores the feeling of being at home by intertwining the (life) stories of different women. All of them come from the same family but belong to different generations. Their commonality lies in their origin. Otherwise, their biographies could not be more different—largely because the prevailing familial and societal norms and beliefs of their respective times inevitably shaped their decisions and life paths. Another unifying element in the text is the theme of motherhood: How do the respective women experience being a mother? In which language are they daughters, and in which are they mothers?
"Ester" is an autofictional book idea that combines real events from my family with fictional characters and occurrences. With this project, I aim not only to advance my thematic research on origin and motherhood and shape it into something literary but also to experiment with language. The primary language is German, but I am attempting to weave in Romansh and find a suitable dramaturgy for it. As part of the coaching program, Flurina Badel is guiding me in developing the concept, which I have already outlined in an initial step. The characters are already established; now, the task is to give them a voice and start writing. The goal is to write as much as possible during the mentoring year and, ideally, to have some form of a manuscript in hand by the end.