Saskia Vogel is the author of Permission (2019) and the translator of over twenty Swedish-language books. She was awarded the Berlin Senate grant for non-German literature and was a finalist for the PEN Translation Award. She worked on The Singularity as part of her translation residency at Princeton University. From Los Angeles, she now lives in Berlin.
24 April,
Fiction / Panel /
Alternative Presents: Jan Carson, Balsam Karam and Saskia Vogel
Friday, 24 April 2026, 7:00pm
The Mick Lally Theatre / €14/16
Book NowJoin us in imagining alternative realities with Jan Carson, Balsam Karam and Saskia Vogel.
In Jan Carson’s Few and Far Between Marion and Robert-John have grown accustomed to their haunted existence on the Ark, monitoring the mysterious Far Side, where ghostly figures linger. Now they’re being forced to leave, how will they cope with a new life on the Mainland? Is it possible to leave the past behind?
In Balsam Karam’s Event Horizon, translated by Saskia Vogel, Milde refuses to accept the order of things and is presented with a final choice: to be publicly executed or launched into space towards a black hole. Collapsing and expanding myth and reality, this narrative is woven with oppression, solidarity, trauma and loss.
Supported by the Swedish Arts Council and Stories from Sweden
Jan Carson
Jan is a writer based in Belfast. She has published three novels, three short story collections and two micro-fiction collections. Her novel The Fire Starters won the EU Prize for Literature for Ireland 2019. Jan’s latest novel, The Raptures was published by Doubleday in early 2022 and was subsequently shortlisted for the An Post Irish Novel of the Year and Kerry Group Novel of the Year. Her short story collection Quickly, While They Still Have Horses was published by Doubleday (UK) in April 2024 and Scribner (US) in July 2024. Her writing has been aired on BBC Radio 3 and 4 and RTE.
She was the Seamus Heaney Centre Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast 2025 and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her first stage play, an adaptation of the children’s classic, The Velveteen Rabbit was produced by Replay Theatre Company at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast in March 2025. Her next novel, Few and Far Between is forthcoming from Doubleday in early 2026 and will be published by Scribner in the US.
Balsam Karam
Balsam Karam (b. 1983) is of Kurdish ancestry and has lived in Sweden since she was a young child. She is an author, librarian and university lecturer, and made her literary debut in 2018 with the critically acclaimed Event Horizon, which was shortlisted for the Katapult Prize. The Singularity was shortlisted for the August Prize and is her first English-language publication.
Saskia Vogel
