Symposium and exhibition in honor of Melitta Urbancic

On Saturday, March 8, 2014, an exhibition will be opened at the National Library in honor of the poet, sculptor, and actress Melitta Urbancic. A symposium on Melitta's life and work will be held at the opening of the exhibition and the program will run from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Melitta's book of poems, Frá hjara veraldar / Vom Rand der Welt, will be published in a bilingual edition by the Vigdís Finnbogadóttir Institute and the University Press this March. The poems are translated into Icelandic by Sölvi Björn Sigurðsson and the afterword is written by Gauti Kristmannsson. Melitta wrote the poems about her experiences as an exile in Iceland from 1939 to 1943, and they are now being published for the first time. The project is being supported by the Vigdís Finnbogadóttir Institute for Foreign Languages, the National Library of Iceland, and Reykjavík UNESCO City of Literature in collaboration with Melitta's descendants. The Austrian Embassy in Copenhagen sponsors the exhibition.

Further information is available on the Reykjavík City of Literature website: http://bokmenntaborgin.is/fra-hjara-veraldar/