LitFest 2025 at Bard College Berlin: Spectacular Currents

LitFest is an annual two-day event celebrating the work of writers working across linguistic and cultural boundaries. In accordance with its motto, LitFest explores “SPECTACULAR CURRENTS”, once again celebrating Berlin's literary diversity by highlighting writers from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds to create meaningful connections. Organized by literature faculty Dr. Andreas Martin Widmann, known for his novel Messias, and Professor of English and Comparative Literature Prof. Dr. Laura Scuriatti, a scholar of Modernist literature. All events take place at Bard College Berlin (Waldstraße 15, Berlin 13156) and are free and open to the public. 

Thursday, November 13 
6:00pm-7:30pm - Poetry & Zines Without Borders
Language: English
This event features founding editor of the Berlin Review Tobias Haberkorn, poet and Bard College Berlin alumnus Sam Zamrik, and translator, songwriter and director of the Toledo-Programm Aurélie Maurin. In a round-table discussion the panelists will talk about their work as multilingual artists, publishers, poets, and educators.

8:00pm-9:00pm - Die Verbliebenen vom Tempelfeld: Novel Reading & Conversation with Ariel Magnus (Argentina/Germany)
Language: German
Argentinian-born author Ariel Magnus will discuss his novel Die Verbliebenen vom Tempelfeld, a story of friendship, migration, and the unique atmosphere of Tempelhofer Feld: a place once remembered as the “Hitler Airport” and today reimagined as an urban utopia.

Friday, November 14
6:00pm-7:00pm - Bard College Berlin Student Reading
Language: English
This event features Bard College Berlin students reading from their works of creative writing, fiction, and poetry.

8:00pm-9:30pm - Contemporary Voices from India: Novel Reading & Conversation with Saskya Jain and Geetanjali Shree (India/Germany) 
Language: English, Hindi
Two acclaimed Indian novelists, Saskya Jain and Geetanjali Shree, will read from their work and engage in a conversation about writing, memory, and the many Indias their fiction brings to life. Across generations and languages, Jain and Shree present two visions of contemporary India: one in English, the other in Hindi, one seen through the eyes of youth, the other through the wisdom of age.

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Tobias Haberkorn is a translator, journalist, and literary scholar. He is co-editor of the bilingual cultural magazine Berlin Review and has worked as a culture editor at ZEIT Online. He studied literature, aesthetics, cultural studies, and mathematics in Paris, Berlin, and Darmstadt, and received his PhD with a dissertation on François Rabelais and Michel de Montaigne. His essays have appeared in DIE ZEIT and other publications. He has held fellowships at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, the American Council on Germany, and the IFK International Research Center for Cultural Studies. His translations include Didier Eribon’s Returning to Reims as well as works by Alain Badiou, Christian Maurel, and Ryan Trecartin.

Saskya Jain is a writer from New Delhi. She is the author of two novels, Fire Under Ash (Penguin Random House), shortlisted for the Shakti Bhatt Prize, and Geeta Rahman at Championship Point (Simon & Schuster), nominated for the Times of India Author Award and the Tata Literature Live Book of the Year Award. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Intelligent Life, The Economist, The Caravan, The Baffler and DIE ZEIT, among others. Educated at Berlin’s Freie Universität and Columbia University, New York, she holds an MFA in Fiction from Boston University. She has taught creative writing and literature at Hong Kong University, Grinnell College and Dartmouth College, and has held writing residencies at Hedgebrook and Art Omi (USA), Sangam House (India) and Toji Cultural Centre (South Korea). She was the 2024 Dorothea Schlegel Artist in Residence at Freie Universität Berlin. 

Ariel Magnus is a novelist, essayist, and literary translator. He grew up in Buenos Aires, studied Romance languages and philosophy in Heidelberg and Berlin, and has written for publications across Latin America as well as for taz and Spiegel Online. His novels include Das zweite Leben des Adolf Eichmann (2021), Die Schachspieler von Buenos Aires (2018), and Zwei lange Unterhosen der Marke Hering (2012). His book Ein Chinese auf dem Fahrrad (Un chino en bicicleta) won the international La Otra Orilla Prize and has been translated into numerous languages. He lives between Buenos Aires and Berlin. Die Verbliebenen vom Tempelfeld (2025) is the first of his novels written in German.

Aurélie Maurin, born in Paris, has lived in Berlin since 2000, working as an event organizer and literary translator (including works by Thomas Brasch and Thomas Rosenlöcher). She was curator for the Haus der Poesie and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt for many years and co-edited the poetry series VERSschmuggel and the magazine la mer gelée. Since 2017, she is head of the TOLEDO-program of the German Translators' Fund, for which she initiated the series TOLEDO-Journale, Cities of Translators, TOLEDO Talks, and the poetry translators' meeting JUNIVERS. Since 2021, she has been the artistic director of the Lyriktreffen Münster poetry festival, together with Anja Utler. Most recent publication: Junivers, Urs Engeler 2023. She also performs her poetry renderings as a musician, which can be listened to at stadtprachen.de.

Geetanjali Shree, born in Mainpuri, India, is an acclaimed novelist, playwright, and literary theorist writing in Hindi and English. She is the author of five novels, including Mai, Hamara Shahar Us Baras (Our City That Year), and Ret Samadhi (Tomb of Sand, tr. Daisy Rockwell), which in 2022 became the first South Asian work to win the International Booker Prize and also received the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation. Her works, translated into numerous Indian and international languages, are known for their lyrical experimentation, linguistic play, and fearless exploration of memory, gender, and history. Shree is a founding member of the Delhi-based collective Vivadi, a working group of theatre makers, visual artists, film makers, and writers and has participated in international residencies and lectures worldwide. In 2025 she is DAAD Artist-in-Residence in Berlin.

Sam Zamrik, born 1996 in Damascus, Syria, is a trans-queer author, translator, and political educator. Zamrik studied literature and politics at Bard College Berlin and was supported by the PIESC program. Several of Zamrik’s texts were published by the WIR MACHEN DAS initiative “Weiter Schreiben” and in various German newspapers such as taz and Tagesspiegel. Zamrik curated several workshops on language, politics, and literature as part of the Archive of Refuge at the House of World Cultures and the Brecht Days at the Literature Forum in the Brecht House, among others. In Fall 2022, Zamrik's English-German poetry collection “ICH BIN NICHT” was published by Hanser Berlin Verlag. Zamrik's debut was selected for the 2023 Poetry Recommendations List of the German Academy for Language and Poetry and was praised by critics as a powerful poetic engagement with the experience of exile. Zamrik was awarded the inaugural Wunderblock Award by the Wunderblock Foundation and was a Junior Fellow at the Mercator Foundation. Sam Zamrik lives and works in Berlin.

For more information, e-mail [email protected].

Time: 6:00 pm – 9:30 pm CET/GMT+1

Location: Julie Johnson Kidd Hall (Waldstraße 15, 13156 Berlin)