Heinrich-Böll-Preisträgerin 2023: Kathrin Röggla

Kathrin Röggla in conversation with Sandra Kegel

The prize, named after Cologne's honorary citizen and Nobel Prize winner Heinrich Böll, has been awarded by the City of Cologne since 1985. On the eve of the official award ceremony in the Historic City Hall, this year's prizewinner Kathrin Röggla talks about her work with literary critic Sandra Kegel in Cologne's Central Library - where the Heinrich Böll Archive is also located.

Röggla achieved fame above all as a linguistic artist who is often associated with the "Vienna Group" due to her linguistic deconstruction and unmistakable style. Chaired by Lord Mayor Henriette Reker, the jury emphasized the stylistic and formal brilliance of the author's work in its statement. In addition, Rögglas' socio-political commitment, "which finds its expression not in theory but in documentary-literary observation", convinced the jury. One example of this is her current publication "Laufendes Verfahren": a novel about the NSU trial, which Röggla accompanied for years.

Kathrin Röggla, born in Salzburg in 1971, studied German and journalism. Röggla works as a prose and theater author, writes and produces radio plays and acoustic installations for various radio stations. From 2004 to 2008, she traveled to Georgia, Iran, Central Asia, Japan, the USA and Yemen, among other places. She has received numerous prizes for her books, including the Italo Svevo Prize, the Anton Wildgans Prize and the Arthur Schnitzler Prize. She has been Professor of Literary Writing at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne since 2020.

Sandra Kegel, born in Frankfurt am Main, works as a journalist, literary critic and editor. Since 2019, she has been the editor responsible for the features section of the FAZ and a member of several literary juries and the 3sat program "Buchzeit".

An event organized by the Heinrich Böll Archive of the Cologne City Library.

In the context of this year's award ceremony, the fifth volume of the prize speeches will be published in the series of publications of the Heinrich Böll Archive and the Literatur-in-Köln-Archiv (LiK).

Cooperation partners are the Cultural Office of the City of Cologne and Literaturhaus

Cologne e. V.

Registration required at https://stadt-koeln.easy2book.de/heinrich-boell-preistraegerin-2023-kathrin-roeggla-event-2889