Book presentations & readings

With the start of Nadja Kayali's directorship in 2024, the Carinthian Summer Festival took on a new direction: music, literature, and discourse enter into a vibrant dialogue – realized in a unique way in the morning concerts . This half-hour format, which takes place every Monday and Tuesday at 8:00 a.m. during the festival, invites audiences to begin their day with language and sound. The focus is on specially commissioned literary texts, each year dedicated to a new theme.

The theme for 2024 was... FreedomEight authors addressed the topic in very different, touching and inspiring ways: Anna Baar, Sabine Gruber, Sophia Lunra Schnack, Kathrin Röggla, Martin Piekar, Milena Michiko Flašar, Julia Jost and Maja Haderlap.
The second series of texts on the topic followed in 2025. hope, written by Verena Dolovai, Tamara Štajner, Vea Kaiser, Sophie Reyer, Kholoud Charaf, Hamed Abboud, Anna Kim and Doron Rabinovici.

These literary texts are now appearing for the first time in two volumes – as a resounding echo of those special encounters between music and language, they invite readers to reread, reflect, and continue their thought processes. On two evenings, Nadja Kayali will read selected texts from both volumes together with the authors.