Dr. Andreas Martin Widmann publishes new short story and offers a look into the literary world of Germany

Dr. Andreas Martin Widmann, BCB faculty of German Literature, recently published a new short story called “Alte Schule.” The story is the interior monologue of a young man reflecting on his recent experience of incarceration while devising a scheme for an arranged marriage between a woman who wrote him letters in prison and his Chinese immigrant roommate. The story was published in the 2023 issue of literary magazine Krachkultur which is limited to one print issue per year and has been called “a Leuchtfeuer unter den literarischen Zeitschriften” (a beacon among literary magazines) by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

On the surface, Widmann’s inspiration for writing the story was simple: “My agent asked me if I could write a love story. I told him: I’ll see what I can do.” However, the roots of the story actually go a bit deeper. Widmann explains, “I had this story… which I had never really finished… I knew it didn’t work, but I hadn’t forgotten about it. So when my agent called, I decided to pick it up again, took the main character in his situation, and wrote it all over.”

When describing his writing process, Widmann says, “I am not really a ‘plotter,’ which means I cannot work from an outline or plan a storyline beforehand and write it down from beginning to end. I usually have a character in mind whom I can picture in a specific situation. If I am lucky, that gives me a first line, and I can gradually build on that.”

“Alte Schule” deals with themes such as incarceration, arranged marriage, and immigration. When it comes to writing about these different topics, Widmann says, “I drew on experiences and observations from the time when my PhD funding had run out and I was teaching classes for job-seekers. That was not research, it was just life. For some of the details, I read up on things such as letter-writing initiatives for people serving prison sentences, as this is crucial to the plot here, and I didn’t want to commit any glaring mistakes.”

Widmann is currently teaching the course The Writing Life at BCB, which explores how the literary scene works in Berlin and elsewhere, designed for students interested in literary studies, creative writing, and the publishing world. He explains, “The idea behind the course is to complement the close-reading and analytical skills students acquire in other literature classes with an understanding of and insights into the literary field. I hope that students will get a sense of how the publishing sphere and the literary scenes interact; of what editors, agents, or translators do; how manuscripts become books; and how and why some books are bought, reviewed, read and others, well, not so much… and how writers can make a living. Last but not least, students get the chance to develop German skills specific to literature and the publishing world.”

Widmann aims to immerse students in the literary scene of Berlin. As part of the course, students in The Writing Life took a field trip this month to attend a session of the internationales literaturfestival berlin (ilb). At the lecture the class attended, New Swiss-German Voices, two young contemporary writers from Switzerland—Judith Keller and Ralph Tharayil—presented their recently published novels. Widmann reports that it was an intimate event, and students had the chance to personally meet one of the authors after the reading.

For those wishing to break into the literary world in Germany, Widmann shares the following advice: “Go to literary events or readings, join a writing group or start your own, watch out for ‘Lesebühnen’ or open mic nights—luckily, in Berlin it doesn’t take long to find other book people from all over the world. Do not be afraid to talk to them.”

Post Date: 09-26-2023