A fourth of 2024

Since the last update on the Peter-Weiss-Prize in my previous post, my research into the false reporting around Artists for Palestine UK has been picked up by journalist Sonja Zekri, who spoke to me for her report in the national newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. And much else has happened in this first quarter of 2024, too: In January, my MA students and I first were lucky enough to have Yasemin Altınay, founding publisher of Literarische Diverse, visit us in class and answer any and all questions about independent publishing that champions diverse voices and stands against far-right discourses. Just a week later, Ebissé Wakjira and Elisa Diallo joined me for our panel discussion “Disrupting Literature: Anti-Racist Strategies for Dutch and German Publishing” at the Goethe-Institut Amsterdam to offer their insights on the workings of publishing houses, prize juries and shared challenges.

It has been great seeing the students who followed my Publishing course finish with very impressive research into the industry in various contexts, before then launching into a March of conference travel. At the American Comparative Literature Assocation (ACLA) annual meeting in Montréal, Marta Cenedese and I got to lead a very rich seminar stream on activist writing and reading practices. Travelling from there to New York, I gave a follow-up public lecture at the CUNY Graduate Centre, titled “What Literature Can’t Do: Political Organizing On and Off the Page in Contemporary Britain and Germany”. I am still buzzing from the conversation with such an engaged group of researchers and grateful for the very welcome, particularly by event organiser Ariel Leutheusser!

The talk I gave there also builds on a text that I have written for the new literary magazine Berlin Review in these first months of the year, too, and that I am excited to share when its next issue is published. Last but not least, I’m glad to be involved in the curation of the day “Schreib (nicht) mit Gedichten die Geschichte” i.e. “(Don’t) Write History As Poetry” at the Literarisches Colloquium Colloquium Berlin on 13 April – see you there if you’re in town!