Werkstatt-Gespräch mit Stefan Gartmann über seinen ersten Roman «Falätscha»

The library of the University of Applied Sciences of the Grisons cordially invites you to a workshop discussion with Stefan Gartmann about his first novel "Falätscha. On Silence in the Mountains". Afterwards we offer an aperitif.

It happened on Alp Falätscha, far back in the Safien Valley. The discovery of a body, a crime 28 years ago. In the valley, everyone knows more than they are willing to say. Detective Jon Calonder and his colleague investigate. Their interrogations and interrogations lead deep into the community of fate of the mountains and bring to light a crime in which the boundaries between victim and perpetrator, between good and evil, are blurred. A murder case whose contours have dissolved in the fog of time.
Together with his publisher Ricco Bilger, Stefan Gartmann will explore the genesis, the making of the novel: from the initial idea to the finished story, from the development of the characters, their trials and tribulations, to silence and its effects on relationships and communities, to law and justice, to guilt and atonement against the backdrop of a supposedly idyllic mountain world in the Safien Valley.

Stefan Gartmann, born in 1962 in Santa Maria in the Münstertal. Childhood and youth in the Poschiavo and the St. Gallen Rhine Valley. Monastery school in Disentis, then Phil. I Studied at the University of Basel with German language and literature as a major subject and Italian literature as well as modern general history as minor subjects. During the summer holidays, as a high school student, he worked as a farmhand on the farm in the Safiental, as a student he worked as a labourer on various construction sites in the Lower Engadine. After completing his studies, he returned to his home canton and worked as a lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences of the Grisons (FHGR) in Chur for over thirty years. Today he is a freelancer.

In 1983, Ricco Bilger opened the bookstore "Sec52" at Josefstrasse 52 in Zurich, which to this day is a place for lovers of good literature and beautiful books. In 1986, the Valaisan founded the International Literature Festival Würfelwortkommadampf in Leukerbad, the place of his childhood. Since 2001, the Bilger publishing house has existed in its current form, with its idiosyncratic publishing program and the books carefully designed by Dario Benassa.

Look forward to an encounter with us that celebrates literary creation and bridges the gap between writing and publishing.