I’m delighted to be hosting a ‘Reading New Fiction By Women of Colour Summer Series’ with The Reader Berlin. We’ll be discussing novels and novellas – from debuts to established voices. We’ll look at issues of craft, style, language, authorship, as well as the politics of reading in our times, including questions of methodology … Read more
Focus is hard to come by these days. I remember reading that the best way to fix procrastination was not to berate yourself or think about will power but to find bigger incentives to do the work. Right now, writing promises one very valuable incentive: escape from the sinister headlines and constant hand-washing. In other … Read more
I didn’t read a book about writing until I was well into my twenties. For as far back as I could remember I desperately wanted to write and I had, throughout my teens, scribbling diaries and long short stories and poems in lined exercise books on my bed after school. If you want to write, … Read more
The last judge of the 2019 Berlin Writing Prize we want to introduce to you is Martin Jankowski. Martin is editor-in-chief of the multilingual Berlin online magazine stadtsprachen.de and directs its international reading series PARATAXE. A writer and poet who emerged from the 1980s East German oppositional underground in Leipzig, he is co-founder … Read more
Meet more judges for the #2019BerlinWritingPrize. Today we talked to writer May-Lan Tan about Berlin, writing to a theme, and community. May-Lan Tan studied fine art at Goldsmiths and works as a ghostwriter. She’s the author of the story collection Things to Make and Break (shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award) and the chapbook Girly. Her stories … Read more
Elnathan John is a lawyer, novelist and satirist. His fiction was shortlisted twice for the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2013 and 2015. He was the recipient of the Civitella Ranieri fellowship in 2015. His novel, Born on a Tuesday won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the Nigeria Prize for Literature, … Read more
Sophie Mackintosh is a writer who grew up in Wales and now lives in London. Her debut novel, The Water Cure, was published by Hamish Hamilton in 2018 and longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize. Her work has appeared in Granta, The New York Times and SLEEK, amongst others, and she was the winner … Read more
We talked to Berlin native and The Circus Hotel‘s manager Katrin Schönig. She is for the second time part of the jury team of the Berlin Writing Prize. We talked to her about Berlin, her interest in Literature, and why The Circus Hotel is involved in the writing competition. You are … Read more
Dolores Walshe (right) with writer and Elsewhere’s Paul Scraton and Lotte Dolores Walshe won the 2017 Berlin Writing Prize for her short story ‘The Wooden Box’. She stayed at The Circus Hotel for one-month in January/February 2018. During her stay she was also a guest at The British Council Seminar, and read (together with … Read more
This is the first in our series of 2019 Berlin Writing Prize interviews. This time we caught up with Victoria Gosling, Reader Berlin and Berlin Writing Prize founder. Victoria established The Reader Berlin in 2011 after moving to Berlin in 2008 from the UK. You first ran a writing competition in 2012. This year, it’s … Read more
Words by Dan Ayres As part of our series of articles aimed at you lovely writers in Berlin and beyond, we’ve curated a selection of helpful online resources to assist you on your writing odyssey. Whilst undoubtedly the web can be a hive of distractions, what with all the viral kitties and tempting baking shows, … Read more
Words by Dan Ayres Whilst Berlin is undoubtedly a fantastic place to be a writer, there is one thing we can all agree on – distractions abound! From the constant lure of the city’s many lakes to the techno music pumping incessantly from your next door neighbours, it can be hard to find the right … Read more