Writer-in-Residence

Barbi Marković was born in Belgrade and studied German language and literature in Belgrade and Vienna. She worked as an editor at the Rende publishing house in Belgrade until she moved to Vienna in 2006. In 2009, she caused a sensation with the Thomas Bernhard remix novel Ausgehen (Izlazenje, 2006), and in 2011/2012, she was the city writer of Graz. Short stories, plays, radio plays and numerous awards followed. In 2016, the novel Superheldinnen was published, which is the first novel that Barbi Marković has written partly in German and partly in Serbian. For Superheldinnen, she received the Alpha Literature Prize in 2016, the Adelbert von Chamisso Promotion Prize in 2017, the Georg Saiko Travel Scholarship in 2018, and the Reinhard Prissnitz Prize in 2019. In 2018, Superheldinnen was staged as a play at the Volkstheater in Vienna. Her most recent works include the radio play Frag die Angst for WDR 3, the dance The Resident (Korzo, Amsterdam), and the play Staub with Theater im Bahnhof, Graz.

Jörg Lukas Matthaei studied Comparative Literature and Philosophy in Passau, Dijon, Bonn, and Berlin. In the 1990s, he began developing multidisciplinary interventions and performances with various artists in independent art venues and public spaces in Berlin. He subsequently founded his own label, matthaei & konsorten, which has produced over 50 projects since 2000, which range from stage productions, installations, and discourse productions to the development of new formats for urban landscapes in various European cities. The latter has been a focal point of Matthaei's work for several years. These site-specific urban projects combine extensive research into collective topography with unique performative portraits. Throughout their open processes (both in the development and the settings for audiences), the roles of performers, observers and authors switch. Everything in an urban space can turn into a zone of play, in which media inputs expand the possibilities of perception and one's own actions.

Christopher Kloeble is a German novelist, playwright, and scriptwriter. He studied at the German Creative Writing Program Leipzig and at the University for Film and Television in Munich, and he has held teaching assignments and residencies in Germany, the US, UK, and India, among others. His plays U-Turn and Memory have been staged at major theatres in Vienna, Munich, Heidelberg, and Nuremberg. For his first novel Amongst Loners, he won the Jürgen Ponto Stiftung prize for best debut 2008; his second book A Knock at the Door appeared in 2009. The third, Almost Everything Very Fast, which Kloeble is currently adapting as a feature film, was published in English with Graywolf Press (USA). His first film script, Inclusion, was produced in 2011 and nominated for the Prix Europa 2012 for Best Movie Script. His most recent novel, The Shadows of the Salz Family, appeared in Germany in 2016. Kloeble lives in Berlin and Delhi. Read more on his website.

Photo Credit: Valerie Schmidt

Michael Speier is a literary scholar, poet and translator, living in Berlin. He holds the Staatsexamen and a Ph.D. in German Literature from the Freie Universität Berlin. Having taught at the Freie Universität Berlin, the University at Leipzig, and several U.S. universities (Dartmouth College and Georgetown University among them), Michael Speier is also Adjunct Professor at the German Department of the University of Cincinnati. In addition to having published a number of anthologies and translated modern English, French, and Italian poetry, he is the founding editor of the Paul-Celan-Jahrbuch and the literary magazine Park. 

His primary scholarly interests include symbolism, expressionistic prose, translation theory and practice, the image of the city in literature, and modern poetry, especially Paul Celan. His teaching interests also include creative writing. The author of numerous articles and reviews, he has written or edited the following books: Die Ästhetik Jean Pauls (1979), Kehr um im Bild (with Dieter Straub, 1983); Im Übersetzen leben. Übersetzen und Textvergleich (with Klaus Berger, 1986); Berlin!Berlin! Eine Großstadt im Gedicht (1987); Poesie der Metropole (1990); Berlin mit deinen frechen Feuern (1998); Interpretationen: Gedichte von Paul Celan (2002); and Berlin, du bist die Stadt (2011).

He has published nine volumes of poetry (most recently: LaokoonsLaptop, 2015; HauptStadtStudio, 2012;  WeltRaumReisen, 2007). His work has appeared in over 50 anthologies and has been translated into twelve languages. He received the Schiller Award (Weimar), the Alfred-Döblin-Stipenum (Akademie der Künste, Berlin), Hermann-Hesse-Stipendium,  Stichting Culturele Uitwisseling-Stipendium and was writer in residence in the USA, France and Hungary.  He was awarded the "Literaturpreis der A + A Kulturstiftung" in Spring 2011.

During his time at the UofA, Michael Speier wrote Damals in Tucson (2016-17).

Zafer Şenocak, author of poetry, novels, and numerous essays, was born in Ankara and moved to West Germany in 1970 at the age of eight. He began to publish his poetry, written in German, while studying in Munich and received literary prizes in 1984 and 1988. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, Şenocak traveled and had residencies or seminars at MIT, University of Miami at Oxford, the University of California Berkeley, Dartmouth College, and Oberlin College. He is the 2015 Max Kade Writer-in-Residence at the University of Arizona’s Department of German Studies where he is participating in a graduate seminar on “Minority Discourses.”

He is currently working on a book project entitled In deinen Worten (“In Your Words”), which he began following the death of his father. Reminiscent of his other works, it explores their relationship as well as the themes of religious beliefs, transnationality, and language. The project will combine the genres of fiction, essay, and biography. Şenocak has been working on this project since 2011 because, as he puts it, “the closer you are to a subject, the harder it is to write about it”. He is also preparing a new collection of poems for publication in the near future.

Text by Patrick Ploschnitzi, MA Student, and Tara Taylor, BA Student, UA German Studies Department.

It was while in Berlin last summer as an artist-in-residence at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research that Philipp Weiss first heard about the Biosphere 2. He began to read about and research the original project that was initiated by an “eco-capitalistic thinking billionaire” and the individuals who called themselves “the Synergists.” What interested Weiss at first was the idea of simulation – “to build a world inside the world and this very strong idea of rebuilding the world in some aspect.”  Weiss was caught by the expression “Spaceship Earth,” as Buckminster Fuller had named it, and the thought of spreading humanity into the universe.  He considered the responsibilities on Earth, and the complications of leaving it – “being here on planet earth, you are part of a very big and fragile system… and in charge and responsible for keeping the system in balance in order for mankind to stay alive on this planet… and on the other hand this [“Spaceship Earth”] makes it very easy to say okay we can mess up with this earth and go elsewhere when we need to.” Weiss recognized dramatic potential in the ideas of this original Biosphere project, especially considering the personal experiences of those researchers who lived within the Biosphere between 1991 and 1993. However, he does not aim to create a documentary piece or tell a story that has already been told, instead he wants to start from the facts and diverge into fiction for his play. These are the current research interests of the Department of German Studies’ newest Max Kade Writer-in-Residence, Austrian author, Philipp Weiss.

Weiss does not write for only one genre, he has done both theater pieces and prose, although the beauty of writing plays lies in transformation. Once he has completed a play he celebrates when “handing it over to theater people – actors, directors – and having it transformed again. It’s a process of a text staying alive and being embodied again and again if the play is staged more than one time.” Weiss gushes, “I have plenty of perspectives and speakers and characters and they all have their own version of the world, their own voices and their own sounds. Different voices are like different instruments – you have a whole orchestra.” Writing short texts and novels is, however, more of an opportunity to have authority over a text for him. He sees in it the possibility to be more exact and fine with his intentions, although he also recognizes the unending space he is creating into and how long such a project can take.

While at the University of Vienna, Weiss studied German Studies, Philosophy, and German as a Foreign Language. For his Master’s thesis he wrote a deconstructionist essay on Peter Handke’s Wunschloses Unglück. Handke’s dynamic writing style inspires Weiss in his own projects, as Weiss recognizes that Handke is not afraid to change his perspective with every new text that he writes; Handke is not afraid to transform. Weiss claims, “I don’t think that a writer should finally come to one voice, to one form and stick to that – [instead] it’s new each time. “

Weiss himself started writing theater pieces in 2005, while he was studying. A professor of his encouraged him to write a play for the Burgtheater, which he did. The play, “egon. Ein Kunst-Stück,” was published in 2008 and performed at the Leopold Museum in Vienna – although Weiss confesses that when he first wrote “egon” he “had no idea what theater was and was just doing what came to mind, but this is very productive and much more interesting than knowing the tradition and fitting in.” Since then Weiss has written 5 other plays, and many pieces of prose. At this time he is working on a novel about the Fukushima accident, and of course the Biosphere 2 play, which is still in the beginning phase.

SELECTED WORKS

Short Prose

• “Pastiche” (2005)
• “Der erotische Körper” (2007)
• “Blätterliebe” (2009)
• Tartaglia (2006/ edit. 2013)
• Malachit und Amphisbaena (2012)

Plays

• egon. Ein Kunst-Stück (2006)
• Seifenblasenoper. Eine Kritik der runden Vernunft (2010)
• Allerwelt (2011)
• die europa. (2012)
• Ein schöner Hase ist meistens der Einzellne (2013)
• Kein schöner Land. (2014)