ICORN lecture 2026: Aaiún Nin

Photo: Informationsdienst Stadt Bern

When: Friday 18. September
Venue: Stavanger Cathedral (Stavanger domkirke)

Buy tickets to ICORN lecture: Taboos thrive in silence. People feel shame and turn the other way - Aaiún Nin.

Aaiún Nin: present and always moving

Born in Luanda, Angola, in 1991, Aaiún Nin lived in Zimbabwe and South Africa before moving to Denmark, where their asylum application was rejected following Angola’s decriminalisation of same-sex relations. After a literary residency in Poland, Nin took up an ICORN residency in Bern, Switzerland, from 2023 to 2025, where they continue to live and work.

Hate and love, side by side

Aaiún Nin writes powerful and personal poetry about being at home in their body when systems offer only uncertainty and homelessness. Their books move between reflection and political analysis, exploring experiences of racialisation and stress, while also allowing light and love to enter.

Nin is the author of three critically acclaimed poetry collections; Broken Halves of a Milky Sun (Astra House, 2022), which received a Norwegian Grimsrud Award and a Lilla Prize, On the Blackness of My Skin (Gads Forlag, 2021), and SE (Gads Forlag, 2025).

The ICORN lecture is a collaboration between Kapittel Festival and ICORN. ICORN is a global network of cities and regions that provides temporary protective residencies for writers, artists, and journalists who face persecution because of their work.

Listen to the ICORN lecture 2025:

ICORN-lecuture 2025: Jan Egeland - The courage to fight for freedom, justice and solidarity in a world falling apart

Former ICORN lectures at the Kapittel Festival:
Jan Egeland, Svetlana Alexievich, Andrè Glucksman, Masha Gessen, Carsten Jensen, Anne Applebaum, Erika Fatland, Andrei Kurkov, Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Lyndsey Stonebridge, Wole Soyinka and others.