THURSDAY 7PM | Room 335C | READING
Prize-winning novelist Olga Grjasnowa will read from her work.
Olga Grjasnowa was born in 1984 in Baku, Azerbaijan, grew up in the Caucasus, and has spent extended periods in Poland, Russia, Turkey, and Israel. She moved to Germany at the age of twelve and is a graduate of the German institute for Literature/Creative Writing in Leipzig. She has been a writer in residence in Amsterdam and Rio de Janeiro, as well as at the universities of Oxford and Warwick; this fall, she will be in residence at Lafayette College. In 2010 Grjasnowa was awarded the Dramatist Prize of the Wiener Wortstätten for her debut play, Mitfühlende Deutsche (Compassionate Germans). Her first novel, Der Russe ist einer, der Birken liebt, was awarded the Klaus-Michael Kuehne Prize and Anna Seghers Prize and was published in English as All Russians Love Birch Trees (Other Press, 2013). Subsequently, Grjasnowa published Die juristische Unschärfe einer Ehe (2016), Gott ist nicht schüchtern (2017), and her most recent novel is Der verlorene Sohn (2020). Her work has been performed on the stage (at the Berliner Ensemble). As an essayist, she has contributed to debates on Antisemitism, Multilingualism, and Homeland, including with an entry in the influential anthology Eure Heimat ist unser Albtraum, recently translated into English and available online as Your Homeland is Our Nightmare.
Sponsored by the DAAD