Notes on Contributors
Gerrit-Jan Berendse
Dr. (1990, University of Utrecht). Professor Emeritus at Cardiff University. Author of, for example, Echoes of Surrealism. Challenging Socialist Realism in East German Literature, 1945–1990 (New York and Oxford 2021, 2025). Guest editor of the Text & Kritik issue on Adolf Endler (Göttingen 2023).
Jen Calleja
Ph.D. (2024, University of East Anglia). Author of Fair: a literary translator memoir, Goblinhood: Goblin as a Mode, Vehicle: a verse novel. Literary translator from German shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, the Oxford- Weidenfeld Prize and the Schlegel-Tieck Prize.
Birgit Dahlke
PD Dr. (2003, HU/ 1994, FU), head of the research institute for Christa and Gerhard Wolf’s private library at the Humboldt University Berlin, biographer of Wolfgang Hilbig (2011) and Christa Wolf (2019), author of Jünglinge der Moderne. Jugendkult und Männlichkeit in der Literatur um 1900 (2006) and Papierboot. Autorinnen aus der DDR – inoffiziell publiziert (1997).
Robert Gillett
Professor Emeritus at Queen Mary University of London. His translations have appeared in Austrian Studies, German Life and Letters and No Man’s Land, with others due to appear in 2025 in a Shearsman anthology edited by Nicola Thomas, Alexander Kappe and Jana Weiss.
Frank Thomas Grub
Dr. phil. (2003, Universität des Saarlandes). Professor at Uppsala University. Author inter alia of “Wende” und “Einheit” im Spiegel der deutschsprachigen Literatur. Ein Handbuch (2003) and Traumreisen in Märchenländer? Studien zur Reiseliteratur aus der DDR Richtung “Westen” (2020). Numerous publications on contemporary German literature and German as a Foreign Language.
Danya Harvey
Ph.D. (2024, University of Glasgow). Published essays include ‘Translational Ethics and Affects in Katja Petrowskaja’s Vielleicht Esther’, in Edinburgh German Yearbook 15 (2022). Zine creator (Sheer, 2024), translator, writer of autofiction, theatre (Sultry Bitch Theory, 2024) and poetry.
Kerstin Hensel
born in 1961, is a poet and writer of novels, short stories and plays. She studied at the Institute for Literature in Leipzig and is a Professor of German dramatic verse at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts. Recent works: Cinderella räumt auf (2021) and Die Glückshaut (2024). Kerstin Hensel lives in Berlin-Wilhelmsruh. www.Kerstin-Hensel.de
Sonja Klocke
Ph.D. (2007, Indiana University Bloomington). Professor of German, Director CGES, University of Wisconsin, Madison. Inter alia author of Inscription and Rebellion: Illness and the Symptomatic Body in East German Literature (2015), co-editor of Christa Wolf: A Companion (2018), Juli Zeh: A Companion (2024).
Astrid Köhler
Dr. Phil. (1994, FU Berlin). Professor of German Literature and Comparative Cultural Studies at Queen Mary University of London. Author inter alia of Brückenschläge. DDR Autoren vor und nach der Wiedervereinigung (2007), co-editor of Uwe Johnson and Adolf Endler, biographer of Klaus Schlesinger, translator from English into German.
Janine Ludwig
Dr. Phil. (2008, HU Berlin). Vice Head of the Institute for Cultural German Studies (ifkud), and Chairwoman of the International Heiner Müller Society. She has published two books on Heiner Müller and, with Mirjam Meuser, two edited volumes on post-GDR literature. Dr. Ludwig teaches at the University of Bremen.
Lyn Marven
D.Phil. (2002, Oxford). Reader in Contemporary German Literature and Translation at the University of Liverpool. Publications include Body and Narrative in Contemporary Literatures in German: Herta Müller, Libuše Moníková, Kerstin Hensel (2005), multiple co-edited volumes on contemporary German-language literature, literary translations.
Michael Opitz
literary scholar and publicist. Co-editor of Benjamins Begriffe (2000), co-author of Deutsche Literaturgeschichte. Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (2013). Co-editor of the DDR-Literatur-Lexikon (2009). Author of Wolfgang Hilbig. Eine Biographie (2017). Editor of Wolfgang Hilbig. “Ich unterwerfe mich nicht der Zensur” (2021).
Ernest Schonfield
Ph.D. (2006, University College London). Lecturer in German at the University of Glasgow. Numerous publications on modern German literature, including Business Rhetoric in German Novels: From Buddenbrooks to the Global Corporation (Camden House, 2018). Editor of www.germanlit.org.
Carola Wiemers
is a lecturer, literary critic and feature writer. Doctorate on Ingeborg Bachmann. Publications on Elfriede Jelinek, Irmtraud Morgner and Tomas Tranströmer, among others. Co-author (with Kerstin Hensel) of Schmoren im Paradies (2020). Editor of the Brigitte Reimann/Günter de Bruyn correspondence (2024). Most recent publication: Günter de Bruyn im Görsdorfer „Abseits“ [1968–2020], Frankfurter Buntbücher 75 (2024).