Fiona Sironic: Am Samstag gehen die Mädchen in den Wald und jagen Sachen in die Luft

Fires are raging in the forests and on screens in the early 2050s. Fifteen-year-old Era tries to counter the rapid pace of environmental destruction by at least documenting the extinction of birds. In a livestream, she watches her classmate Maja and her sister Merle as they blow up hard drives in a clearing, thereby—as the children of two “momfluencers”—erasing the memories of their childhood in the public eye. The moderator is Dr. Henning Heske, chair of the jury for the Lower Rhine Literature Prize. Fiona Sironic (born in 1995 in Neuss, North Rhine-Westphalia) studied creative writing, language arts, and gender studies in Hildesheim and Vienna. Among other achievements, Sironic was a fellow at the 21st Klagenfurt Literature Course, was nominated for the first Wortmeldungen Sponsorship Award, and was a winner of the 27th Open Mike. She has published short prose and novel excerpts in magazines and anthologies, including Bella Triste and JENNY. In addition to prose, she has written articles on video games and continues to lead creative writing workshops to this day. Her debut novel, *On Saturdays, the Girls Go into the Forest and Blow Things Up*, was published in March 2025 by Ecco-Verlag and was shortlisted for the Puchheim Book Prize and the German Book Prize.