Would you like to bring a bit of international flair into your creative writing? Would you like to learn writing tips in an intimate setting from three renowned European novelists? If so, you are cordially invited to join us for a free online writing workshop as part of this year’s Zeitgeist Literature Showcase, featuring a lighting round of three 20-minute workshops offered by three acclaimed novelists from Germany, Switzerland and Austria.
When: Saturday, November 6, 2021 | 10 am - 11.30 am
Where: online
Ticket: Free admission, registration obligatory
ABOUT THE EVENT
Inspired by speed-dating, this 90-minute event will offer participants a round of three rotating 20-minute workshops with each of three novelists: Anna Baar from Austria, Isabel Fargo Cole from Germany, and Judith Keller from Switzerland.
In their individual break-out rooms, each author will share their creative strategies, writing and/or translation exercises, and lead participants in generative workshops. There will be time for collective questions and answers at the end of the rotating workshops. Enrollment is capped at 60 participants (20 participants maximum for each workshop).
Note: this event will be suitable for writers or aspiring writers at any level.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
A free reader put together by our colleagues in New York City, who run Festival Neue Literatur, can be found here:
Festival Neue Literatur - Reader
The reader includes excerpts from the following:
*Die Farbe des Granatapfels / The Color of the Pomegranate, by Anna Baar, translated by Sophie Duvernoy
*Das Gift der Biene / The Poison of the Bees, by Isabel Fargo Cole, translated by the author
*Die Fragwürdigen / The Questionable Ones, by Judith Keller, translated by Tess Lewis
Anna Baar (Austria)
Anna Baar was born in Zagreb, Croatia, formerly Yugoslavia, as the daughter of a Dalmatian mother and an Austrian father. Her childhood and youth were spent in Austria (Vienna, Klagenfurt) and on the Dalmatian island of Brač. Baar studied journalism and public relations at the universities of Vienna and Klagenfurt. In 2008, she graduated Dr. Phil. From the University of Klagenfurt. Since then, Baar has done freelance work commissioned in the fields of the economy, science and arts. She has also done work for radio and print media.
Since 2012, Baar has published numerous short stories, essays, and poems in magazines and anthologies. Her first novel Die Farbe des Granatapfels (Wallstein) — The Color of the Pomegranate — was published in 2015. An excerpt from the manuscript was shortlisted in the Ingeborg Bachmann Literary Competition 2015. The novel was also ranked as number 1 on the ORF Best List for three months and awarded the Rotahorn Literature Prize.
In 2017, Baar published the novel Als ob sie träumend gingen (Wallstein) – As if They Were Walking in a Dream. For this sophomore novel, she received the Theodor Körner Prize. Reviewers often praise Baar`s extraordinary sense of language. She composes her stories like pieces of music in a very distinctive, pictorial, expressive narrative tone – associatively and at the same time sharply contoured on the border between facts and imagination. The Austrian reviewer Julia Kospach calls her “one of the boldest voices of contemporary German-language literature.” Anna Baar lives in Klagenfurt and Vienna. Her newest novel, Nil (Wallstein Verlag), was published earlier in 2021.
Isabel Fargo Cole (Germany)
Photo © Simona Lexau
Isabel Fargo Cole was born in Galena, Illinois, USA, and grew up in New York City, where she attended Hunter College High School. Cole graduated with honors from the University of Chicago in 1995 (AB General Studies in the Humanities), where she studied creative writing with Richard Stern. Since 1995, she has lived in Berlin as a writer and translator.
Since 2005, Cole has written mainly in German and published stories in various literary magazines. From 2006-2008, she coedited the lauter niemand (EN translation: according to nobody) magazine; from 2006-2016 she coedited no man’s land, an annual online magazine for new German literature in English. In 2013, Cole was a co-organizer of the initiative “Writers Against Mass Surveillance” along with Priya Basil, Ilija Trojanow, Juli Zeh, and others.
Cole’s first novel, Die grüne Grenze (EN translation: The Green Frontier), was published by Edition Nautilus in 2017 and nominated for the Klaus Michael Kühne Debut Prize. Her second novel, Das Gift der Biene (EN translation: The Venom of the Bee), was published by Edition Nautilus in 2019. Cole is also a prolific translator and has worked extensively with the works of German-language writers Wolfgang Hilbig and Franz Fühmann. Cole’s translation of Hilbig’s Old Rendering Plant (DE: Die alte Abdeckerei) received the Kurt and Helen Wolff Prize for outstanding translation in 2018.
Judith Keller (Switzerland)
Photo © Ayse Lavas
Judith Keller was born in 1985 in Lachen, Switzerland, and lives in Zürich. She studied literature in Leipzig and Biel, as well as German as a foreign language in Berlin and Bogotá, Colombia, and was editor of the literary magazine Edit.
After numerous publications of journals and anthologies, her story Wo ist das letzte Haus? (The Last House), for which she was awarded the New German Fiction Prize in 2014, was published as an ebook by Matthes & Seitz. The work was subsequently translated into English by Katy Derbyshire and republished through Readux Books. Keller has completed writing residencies in New York City and Belgrade, Serbia.
In 2017, Keller’s book Die Fragwürdigen (The Questionable Ones) was published in 2017 by Der gesunde Menschenversand, and won an award by both the City of Zurich and the Canton of Zurich. Die Fragwürdigen was also performed as a theater production and featured as an audio play for Swiss radio.