Twenty Minutes of Silence

Join us on the evening of the 10th July at Boekhandel Perdu for an intimate reading with Kate Briggs. In the bookshop we will gather to celebrate the publication of Hélène Besette’s Twenty Minutes of Silence, a second translation from the French to appear in Fitzcarraldo blue. To mark the occasion, Kate will read from her translation before engaging in conversation with Mia You. The doors will open at 18.00 for a 18.30 start, and tickets are available via perdu.nl for 5€.

Kate Briggs is a writer, editor & translator based in Rotterdam, where she founded and co-runs Short Pieces That Move, a micro-press & pedagogical project. In 2025, she published the first English-language translation of Hélène Bessette’s debut novel, Lili is Crying (Fitzcarraldo Editions & New Directions), a finalist for the 2026 French-American translation prize. Editorial projects include A Social Practice of Unknowing Yourself in Real Time: Work on Conversation (co-edited with Laura Haynes following a residency at Glasgow School of Art (2025)) & Verbs for Practicing Togetherness, with graduates from the Masters in Artistic Research in & through Cinema at The Netherlands Film Academy (2026). She is most recently the author of I am not ready, a pamphlet of poems (SPTM, 2026). She teaches at the Piet Zwart Institute.

Mia You is the author of the poetry collections Festival (Belladonna, 2025) and I, Too, Dislike It (1913 Press, 2016), and the chapbooks Rouse the Ruse and the Rush (Nion Editions, 2023) and Objective Practice (Achiote Press, 2007). Her poems have appeared in Poetry magazine, the Boston Review, nY, De Gids, Nioques and the PEN Poetry Series. She teaches Anglophone literature at the Universiteit Utrecht and in the Critical Studies program at the Sandberg Institute.