KW x DAAD Elif Batuman & Merve Emre

An evening with Elif Batuman and Merve Emre - two authors who combine literary writing and criticism, aesthetic experience and reflection. They will talk about books and texts that have shaped them and about how literature shapes our thoughts and experiences.

Elif Batuman is the author of the novels Either/Or (2022) and The Idiot (2017), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and the Women's Prize, as well as the essay collection The Possessed (2010), with which she began her ongoing dialog with world literature. A longtime contributor to The New Yorker, she writes about the connections between politics, literature and life. In 2026 she is a literature fellow of the DAAD Berlin Artists-in-Residence Program.

Merve Emre is the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor at Wesleyan University. She has published The Ferrante Letters (2020), The Personality Brokers (2018) and Paraliterary (2017). A regular contributor to The New Yorker, she focuses on literary institutions, reading practices, and the importance of cultural and literary criticism.

The KW × DAAD event is the first in a new series curated by Liberty Adrien (Curator, KW) and Mathias Zeiske (Head of Literature and Film, DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program), which brings DAAD fellows into conversation with actors from the Berlin cultural scene. The event will be held in English.