Abschluss­veranstaltung zum 1:1-Mentoring – mit Sabrina Janisch, Fatima Khan, Julie Schöttner & Mithu Sanyal

In the organizer's words:

Writers need support, especially at the beginning of their careers. They need encouragement as much as they need a confident, critical view of their work and advice on artistic and practical issues. The 1:1 mentoring program of the literary offices in Bonn and Düsseldorf offers the right framework for all of this: For one year each, an experienced, renowned author works together with an up-and-coming author.

On this evening, the two 1:1 teams of 2024: Fatima Khan & Mithu Sanyal and Julie Schöttner & Sabrina Janesch will report on their collaboration, on the development of their respective writing projects and on all questions and topics relating to writing and the literary industry that have arisen over the course of the year. Of course, there will also be reading!

Sabrina Janesch, born in 1985 in Gifhorn, Lower Saxony, studied cultural journalism in Hildesheim and Polish studies in Krakow. Her debut novel "Katzenberge" was published in 2010 and was awarded the Mara Cassens Prize and the Anna Seghers Prize, among others. She was a fellow of Ledig House, New York, and a writer-in-residence in Gdansk. She currently lives with her family in Münster.

Fatima Khan was born in Bhola (Bangladesh) in 1987 and grew up in Cologne. The freelance author, artist, curator and moderator studied Ancient Languages and Cultures, Classical Literature and German Studies at the University of Cologne. In 2018, she was the initiator and co-founder of "q[lit]*clgn", the first feminist literature festival in Germany. Since 2022, she has been studying Media Arts / Literary Writing at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne and is working on her debut novel.

Mithu Sanyal, born in Düsseldorf in 1971, is a cultural scientist, author, journalist and critic. Her non-fiction book "Vulva. The Invisible Sex" was published in 2009 and "Rape. Aspects of a crime". Her first novel "Identitti" was shortlisted for the 2021 German Book Prize and was awarded the Ruhr Literature Prize and the 2021 Ernst Bloch Prize. Her much-discussed second novel "Antichristie" was published in September.

Julie Sophia Schöttner, born in Gießen in 1995, studied German literature in Leipzig and co-founded the reading stage Apropos. She has lived in Cologne since 2020 and studies Literary Writing and Film at the Academy of Media Arts. She mainly writes short prose. She has published texts in the anthologies of the OVAG-Jugendliteraturpreis, the Literaturforum Hessen-Thüringen, WORD. magazine and KURZE. In 2019, she was nominated for the hr2 Literature Prize.