Now, in March 2022, the first writer has arrived who comes as an international guest, Austrian author Cornelia Hülmbauer.
Hülmbauer, who was born in the Austrian town of Amstetten, studied English, art history, and linguistics and currently lives in Vienna. As a writer, she has written mainly poetry, short prose fiction, and audio plays, and she is a co-publisher of the literary magazine Jenny. She has been awarded several literary prizes in recent years, including the Theodor Körner Prize, the Audience Prize at the Václáv Burian Literary Festival in Olomouc in the Czech Republic, the Emil Breisach Prize, and the Marianne von Willemer Prize.
Her book MAU OEH D was published in Berlin in 2020.
After being unable to participate in the Pécs residence program in early 2020 because of the pandemic and lockdowns, Hülmbauer was very pleased to have the opportunity at last to come to Pannonhalma this year. As she put it in her work plan, during her time here, “I will be working on an autofiction book project that tells episodes in the story of the life of a child in rural Austria in the 1980s and 1990s in a lyrical prose framework. The contextual backdrop is a car repair shop run as a family business within which the narrator moves in the first person singular.”
Cornelia Hülmbauer arrived in Hungary by train from Vienna on 1 March, and she was welcomed Father Konrád Dejcsics, the cultural director at the Abbey, and shown around her “monastic” quarters and the monastery itself. She is also given board in the guest dining room, although she was reminded that soon the period of Lent will begin, and this applies to meals served at the Abbey.
As Hülmbauer has noted, she considers it an honor to be able to write within the walls of this proud edifice, which looks back on a history of a thousand years. Though she intends to concentrate on writing, she is of course open to all that Pannonhalma has to offer to those who come here, whether from the perspectives of belief and faith or the actual programs and events. Several such programs will be held during her stay, including a concert and an exhibition opening.