Writers & Presenters 2021
Oliver Stone
Oliver Stone was born September 15, 1946 in New York City. He served in the U.S. Army Infantry in Vietnam in 1967-68 and was decorated with the Bronze Star for Valor. After returning from Vietnam, he completed his undergraduate studies at New York University Film School in 1971. He worked as a taxi driver, merchant mariner, advertising salesman, and production assistant.
Academy Award winning Oliver Stone has written and directed over 20 full-length feature films, among them some of the most influential and iconic films of the last decades. Some have been at deep odds with conventional myth—films such as “Platoon” (1986), the first of three Vietnam films; “Born on the Fourth of July” (1989); “JFK” (1991); “Natural Born Killers” (1994); and “Nixon” (1995).
His written screenplays, though not directed, gave him an early taste of the difficulty of his ideas. An uproar greeted “Midnight Express” (1979) and only grew with “Scarface” (1983). He also wrote “Year of the Dragon” (1985) and “Conan the Barbarian” (1982). He has produced or co-produced a dozen films, including “The People vs. Larry Flynt” (1996), “Joy Luck Club” (1993), and “Reversal of Fortune” (1990).
His documentaries include three on Fidel Castro -- “Comandante” (2003), “Looking for Fidel” (2004), and “Castro in Winter” (2012); one on South America, “South of the Border” (2009), prominently featuring Hugo Chavez and six other Presidents in a continent undergoing huge social changes; and “Persona Non Grata” (2003) on Israel-Palestine relations.
Peter Stamm
Peter Stamm, was born 1963 in Weinfelden, Thurgau. After an apprenticeship as accountant he studied English Literature, Psychology and Psychopathology for some semesters at Zürich University. Before taking up a career as freelance writer, he was working as a journalist for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the Tages-Anzeiger, Die Weltwoche, and the satirical magazine Nebelspalter. He spent some time in Paris, New York and Scandinavia and lives now with his family in Winterthur/Switzerland. So far, he has published six novels, four collections of stories, three children's books and several radio and stage plays. His books have been translated into 39 languages. For his entire body of work and his accomplishments in fiction, he was short-listed for the Man Booker International Prize in 2013, and in 2014 he won the prestigious Friedrich Hölderlin Prize.
Photo credit: © Sabina Bobst, Zürich / https://www.kontrast.ch/bobst
Patrick Chappatte
Patrick Chappatte is the cartoonist for Le Temps, in Geneva, for the NZZ am Sonntag, in Zurich and for the German magazine Der Spiegel. He also contributes to the Canard Enchaîné in France and the Boston Globe in the United States. For 20 years he was a cartoonist first for the International Herald Tribune and then for the New York Times.
In 2011, 2015, and 2018, he received the Overseas Press Club of America New York Cartoon Award. He is the only non-American to have received this distinction. He also won the Swiss Cartoon of the Year award three times, in 2012, 2014 and 2020.
In parallel with the press cartoon, Patrick Chappatte publishes collections of press cartoons as well as comics reports, the latest of which At the Heart of the Wave looks back on the Covid crisis in Geneva and more generally on its universal scope.
Photo credit: © Eddy motta, le Temps
Simone Lappert
Simone Lappert, born in Aarau, Switzerland, in 1985, studied at the Swiss Literature Institute in Biel. Her debut novel Shadows Cast made it onto the shortlist for the ›aspekte Prize‹. Simone was awarded the Wartholz Prize as best newcomer and she is the president of the Basel International Poetry Festival, as well as the Swiss curator for the poetry project Babelsprech International. She lives and works in Basel and Zurich. Her most recent novel Jump was on the shortlist for the Swiss Book Prize 2019. Additional acclaims of hers include, receiving a nomination for Jump for the favourite book of the German Speaking Swiss Book trade (2020), her nomination for Jump for the Swiss Book Prize(2019), and winner of a grant from the Basel Literature Committee for poetry (2018).
Eve de Castro
Eve de Castro is a writer and screenwriter. She has notably authored Les Bâtards du soleil (1987), Ayez pitié du cœur des hommes (prix des Libraires 1992), Nous serons comme des dieux (1996) and numerous other novels. Her latest book, La Femme qui tuait les hommes., was released in 2018.
Her Awards include the Prix des libraries, Prix des Deux Magots, and Prix Maurice Genevois. For television, she co-wrote Le Roi Danse and Rastignac.
Thomas Meyer
Thomas Meyer, born in Zurich in 1974, and currently living there, quit his legal studies to work as a journalist and as a copywriter in the advertising industry. In 2007, he went freelance as an author and copywriter. His novel Wolkenbruch’s Weird and Wonderful Journey into the Arms of a Shiksa became a bestseller and its movie adaptation was a big hit in Swiss cinemas in 2018. His book Wolkenbruch’s Reckless Rendez-Vous with the Seductive Spy was on the shortlist for Best Entertainment in a German Audio Book (2020).