Lora Tomaš | Artists in Residence | Kamov Residency

Lora Tomaš

Lora Tomaš (1981) holds a master's degree in indology and English Language and Literature from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb, and a master's degree in gender studies from the Central European University in Budapest. She co-edited and co-translated two anthologies of contemporary Indian short stories and poetry – Popodnevni pljuskovi: izbor iz suvremenog indijskog ženskog pisanja (V.B.Z., 2011) and Lotosi od neona: indijski autori o gradovima i drugim ljubavima (Studio TiM & Indijski kulturni centar, 2017), for which she received a six-month support from the Croatian Ministry of Culture in 2016. 

An early version of her novel Slani mrak made it to the final of the 2019 V.B.Z. Best Unpublished Novel Award, and was later added a short story titled Prozor s pogledom. It was also selected for the finals of the European Short Story Festival 2018. The novel was published in 2020 by Hena com. Slani Mrak was adapted into a radio novel for the Croatian Radio. It won the Slavić Award for the best debut and made to the the semifinals of Tportal's competition for the best Croatian novel.

Lora Tomaš spent several years in South Asia writing reportages and literary critiques for Asian newspapers and magazines (JetWings, Himāl Southasian, Deccan Herald, Fountain Ink, Goa Herald, Tehelka, The Sunday Guardian, Mint, The Hindu, The Hindu Business Line, The Times of India). She currently lives in Zagreb, working as a literary translator, critic and journalist.  She is an external associate of the Institute for the Development of Education.

On cities and Gardens

15.-29.10.2021.

As part of her artist residency in Rijeka, Lora Tomaš is creating the final version of a manuscript of a working title On cities and Gardens. For ten years, Tomaš has been collecting and reading materials for this intertextual novel, which is partly based on her travel pieces from India and Nepal, created between 2012 and 2015.

The novel is a combination of essays, poetic fragments and travelogues. The core of the book resides in the author's travels in India and Nepal (she spent three years in South Asia), but also on her dialogues with several writer-traveler-artists. Tomaš thus puts down on paper the variations on a theme, different episodes from the writers’ travelogues, letters and diaries, with references to theoretical texts, particularly those covering the topic of (women's) travels, and works from various fields of art. Tomaš critically reflects on the carefully constructed narratives of the (male) hero, the colonizing type of such journeys and attitudes towards the world, the imperialism.

Reading through the texts of Maya Deren, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Isabelle Eberhardt, Gertrude Bell, Rosita Forbes, Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, Alexandra David-Néel, Margaret Cotter Morison, Freya Stark, Rebecca Solnit, Jamaica Kincaid and many others, the author addresses the issue of the female viewpoint, the concept and practice of female flaneurism and female creativity, as well as the relationship between literature and traveling. To what extent was the described journey an authentic one, experienced first hand, and how much was it tinted and influenced by what had been read beforehand?  To what extent did these women travel through real, physical landscapes, and to what extent did they travel through landscapes mediated through literature or even landscapes that were purely literary? 

During her two-week artist residency, Tomaš will get the needed space to focus on her novel, and as part of a literary evening, she will have the opportunity to present the manuscript and receive feedback from colleagues and the audience.

Rijeka City Library

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