In June 2026, REM celebrates the following anniversaries:
- The 69th anniversary of the death of British author Dorothy Richardson, a pioneer of experimental modernist prose. Her major work is Pilgrimage, a thirteen-volume work narrated exclusively through the consciousness of its heroine; it is as significant in the history of women’s writing as it is for the history of twentieth-century literature. Richardson’s reputation declined after 1945, but revived with second-wave feminism in the 1960s and 1970s, and she now has an established place in the modernist canon.
- The 95th anniversary of the founding of the Archives Internationales de la Danse (AID) by Rolf de Maré in Paris in 1931. Devoted to dance in all its forms and global manifestations, this unique venue comprised a dance museum, library, archive, a sociology and ethnography section, conference hall, and an exhibition and performance space. AID supported modern forms of choreography, the exploration of non-Western traditions, and the creation of an innovative research environment.
- The 96th birthday of Turkish-Egyptian author Fatimah Abdullah Rifaat. She addressed issues of the body, sexuality, and love in a peculiar way; her descriptive power, particularly of the feelings of her female characters, is remarkable. Her short stories and novel were not published until late in her life due to opposition from her family and husband, and notwithstanding her pioneering work, Rifaat is not widely known in Egypt or abroad.
- The 137th birthday of Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, arguably Russia’s most famous female poet. She belonged to the Acmeism literary movement, which moved away from the dominant Symbolist aesthetic in favour of higher clarity and precision. Her early lyric poetry found great success, but the Communist years proved very difficult for her. Her famous poems Poem Without a Hero [Poema bez geroia] and Requiem [Rekviem] address the oppressive historical period in which she lived.