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Lolli Editions 132 Defoe House, Barbican EC2Y 8ND London [email protected] lollieditions.com Tools for Extinction Lolli Editions brings 18 international writers together in response to Covid-19 With contributions by Enrique Vila-Matas, Olivia Sudjic, Inger Wold Lund, Vi Khi Nao, Patrícia Portela, Jon Fosse, Michael Salu, Lucie Elven, Mara Coson, Christina Hesselholdt, Jean-Baptiste Del Amo, Naja Marie Aidt, Joanna Walsh, Frode Grytten Anna Zett, Emilio Fraia, Olga Ravn, and Jakuta Alikavazovic Publication: 21 May 2020 Description: 200 × 130 mm, 120 pages, softcover ISBN: 978-1-9999928-2-8 Design: Ard – Chuard and Nørregaard Price: £17 1 Lolli Editions 132 Defoe House, Barbican EC2Y 8ND London [email protected] lollieditions.com About the anthology In Tools for Extinction, 18 writers from across the globe answer to the open-ended period of social distancing, closures, and illness caused by Covid-19. Compiled during the initial lockdown in Europe, this special collection is a meteoric publishing project with contributions from some of the most exciting, innovative, and celebrated authors working today. Meditating on notions of distance and closeness, sameness and alterity, extinguishing and kindling, the book considers how a common pause might give rise to new modes of domesticity and shift experiences of time. What gestures and actions are we willing to perform to make ourselves, and each other, feel at ease – or at work? What tools and objects are useful, or unprecedentedly useless, to us in the process? And as our species’ trademark proclivity for projecting ourselves into the future is disrupted, might we come to see the buildings, animals, plants and foodstuffs around us in a new light? Translations by Margaret Jull Costa, Zoë Perry, Martin Aitken, Denise Newman, Paul Russell Garrett, Damion Searls, and Rahul Bery Compiled, edited and with a foreword by Denise Rose Hansen. The press writes “The strongest lockdown literature.” – Michael La Pointe, TLS “All the pieces here feel like they could end abruptly. They often do. This gives the collection a start and stop quality that feels appropriate. Our newsfeed minds are often diving in and self-ejecting out of intimate scenes from others’ lives. Reading this book is akin to wandering around the authors homes, seeing if they’ve got any grand truths on the mantelpiece or in the basket on the landing. But there’s often no lesson to be learned from solitude other than the experience of it. The hope carried in this book is that we can lean on fiction even beyond its breaking point – and our own.” – Jordan Barger, Republic of Consciousness 2 Lolli Editions 132 Defoe House, Barbican EC2Y 8ND London [email protected] lollieditions.com “Tools for Extinction is acute literature. it signals the emergence of crisis- responsive fiction.” – Klaus Rothstein, Weekendavisen “Tools for Extinction grapples with the grief, trauma and anxiety of Covid-19 without presenting these phenomena as something entirely new. It is not a time capsule or a pandemic diary. It is not meant to be a record of an aberration to be read in libraries and schools in 2021 that look just like those of 2019. Tools for Extinction is meant to show that artists will have to adapt. The fact that the book came together in a few short months during a lockdown shows it can be done. And the resonance that the writing has for a reader still in lockdown shows that art still matters.” – Artists’ Books Reviews “I'm greatly impressed with the speed at which this book was put together but also that it takes a global view from authors from nearly every continent and many different cultures. In a time of such extreme physical separation and when it's impossible to know when I'll be able to travel internationally again it's comforting to hear the immediacy of these voices from around the world. It's also touching to see overlapping observations between countries whether it's the experience of viewing individuals smoking on distant balconies or similar feelings of loneliness felt in very different locations.” – The Lonesome Reader “Spending many weeks in lockdown in Belgrade, I was keenly aware of how easily silence breaks when the sirens ensue. I remember that period of time in a somewhat somnambulant manner, which is why Jon Fosse’s piece titled ‘Krakk, Krakk; has resonated with me so profoundly. Following Fosse’s narrator, I was on the verge of rekindling the eerie feeling I sometimes had while in lockdown, that of losing track of both time and reality, night and day.” – Anglozine Author and translator biographies NAJA MARIE AIDT was born in Greenland in 1963. Her first short story collection Baboon won the 2007 Danish Critics Prize for Literature and the 2008 Nordic Council Literature Prize. Her debut novel Rock, Paper, Scissors was published in 2012. In addition to fiction, she has published poetry collections, theatre and radio 3 Lolli Editions 132 Defoe House, Barbican EC2Y 8ND London [email protected] lollieditions.com plays, lyrics and children books and been awarded many awards including the Beatrice Prize and a Danish Arts Foundation lifelong artistic performance grant. In 2017 she published When Death Takes Something From You, Give it Back: Carl’s Book about the death of her son. It was longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature 2019 (tr. Denise Newman) and shortlisted for the Kirkus Review Awards 2019 and has been translated into fourteen languages. DENISE NEWMAN is a poet and translator based in San Francisco. She has published four collections of poetry, most recently, Future People. She is the translator of the short story collection, Baboon, by Naja Marie Aidt, which won the PEN Translation Prize, and Aidt’s memoir, When Death Takes Something From You, Give It Back: Carl’s Book, a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, and a semi-finalist for the National Book Award. VI KHI NAO is the author of the poetry collections Human Tetris (11:11 Press, 2019) Sleep Machine (Black Sun Lit, 2018), Umbilical Hospital (Press 1913, 2017), and The Old Philosopher which won the Nightboat Prize for 2014. She has also published the novel, Fish in Exile (Coffee House Press, 2016) and her short story collection A Brief Alphabet of Torture won the 2016 FC2’s Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize. Her work includes poetry, fiction, film and cross-genre collaboration. She was the Fall 2019 fellow at the Black Mountain Institute. JEAN-BAPTISTE DEL AMO (b. 1981) is one of France’s most exciting and ambitious young writers. He is the author of Pornographia, Le sel, and Une éducation libertine, which won the Goncourt First Novel Prize. Animalia, his fourth novel, is his first to appear in English with Fitzcarraldo Editions, translated by Frank Wynne. He is the winner of the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize. JOANNA WALSH is the author of seven books including the digital work, seed- story.com. Her latest book, Break.up, was published by Semiotext(e) and Tuskar Rock in 2018. She is also a visual artist, works as a critic, editor and teacher, and is an arts activist. The founder of #readwomen (2014-18), described by the New York Times as ‘a rallying cry for equal treatment for women writers’, she currently runs @noentry_arts, campaigning against ageism in the arts, and @zinesinthedark, a lockdown zine exchange. She is a UK Arts Foundation fellow, and a current PhD candidate in Creative and Critical Writing at the University of East Anglia. ANNA ZETT is a Berlin-based artist, writer & filmmaker. Their often dialogical practice considers processes of sense-making through image, narrative, contact and 4 Lolli Editions 132 Defoe House, Barbican EC2Y 8ND London [email protected] lollieditions.com movement, directing attention to physical situations that don’t align with logocentric power and technology. With their work Zett has participated in various institutional and independent contexts within the international visual and performing arts. Zett is the (co-)author of two experimental radio plays produced by the German public radio. In 2019 they published the book Artificial Gut Feeling (Divided Publishing, Brussels/London) and presented two solo exhibitions (Zionskirche Berlin & Or Gallery, Vancouver). OLIVIA SUDJIC is a writer living in London. She is the author of Sympathy (her 2017 debut novel), Exposure (an extended personal essay published in 2018), and a second novel, Asylum Road, forthcoming 2021. Her work has also appeared in a range of publications including The New York Times, The Paris Review, The Guardian and Financial Times. ENRIQUE VILA-MATAS was born in Barcelona in 1948. His extraordinary literary oeuvre includes Bartleby & Co, Montano, Never Any End to Paris, Dublinesque, The Illogic of Kassel and Mac and his problem, longlisted for the International Booker Man Prize 2020. He is the recipient to several international awards, including the Romulo Gallegos Award, the Prix Médicis, the Prix Jean Carrière, the Premio Gregor von Rezzori, the Formentor Award, the Prix Ulysse and the FIL de Literatura Prize. His works have been translated into 35 languages. MARGARET JULL COSTA has been a literary translator for almost forty years and has translated works by novelists such as Eça de Queiroz, Jo sé Saramago and Javier Marías, as well as the poetry of Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, Ana Luísa Amaral and Fernando Pessoa. In 2013 she was invited to become a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and in 2014 she was awarded an OBE for services to literature. MARA COSON is a writer based in Manila. Her novel Aliasing (2018) was published by Book Works. MICHAEL SALU is a writer, artist, critic and creative director, whose work and ideas find a place in a multidisciplinary practice.

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