Australian writer arrives in Taipei for arts exchange

Australian author Bernard Cohen, the first foreign artist invited to Taipei under the city government's "artists in residence" program, arrived in Taipei on Wednesday, opening a window to international literature for Taiwan.

Introducing Cohen to Taipei citizens, Lung Ying-tai (龍應台), director of the Cultural Affairs Bureau of the Taipei City Government, said Cohen will stay in Taipei for more than one month to "examine the capital city with an artist's eyes and provide Taipei residents with a foreign perspective of their daily lives."

Lung said that under the "artists in residence" program, more than 10 writers and artists from abroad will be invited to Taipei to accelerate cultural exchanges between Taipei citizens and the artists during their residence period.

Among those on the invitation list is Chinese dissident novelist-playwright Gao Xingjian (高行健), who won the 2000 Nobel Prize in Literature last month, Lung noted.

The 60-year-old Gao, who has lived in self-exile in France over the past 12 years, was previously scheduled to visit Taipei as an artist in residence for three months beginning at the end of this October.

Gao, who is a personal acquaintance of Lung, was forced to reschedule his Taipei visit after he won the Nobel prize for literature, Lung said.

Cohen, who has made London his home for the past two years, is now a coordinator and writer with HOME Web site project for the trAce online writing community and the New Perspectives Theater Group.

A prolific writer, Cohen, 37, was selected as one of the most promising young writers in Australia by the Sydney Morning Herald. Among his most famous writings are Blindman's Hat, a novel that won the 1998 Australian/Vogel Award, and the novel Snowdome.

Once a co-editor of Editions Review, the national magazine of books and writing in Australia, Cohen has also worked as a broadcast program producer in Australia and a writer in residence at Nottingham Trent University in the UK.