Opening Lecture: 27th Liliencron Lectureship to Heinz Janisch & Awarding of the Liliencron Young Talent Prize to Dara Brexendorf

Heinz Janisch is a master of the short form: with his special gift for viewing the world through the eyes of children and turning ordinary things in surprising, cheeky ways, he delights both children and adults alike. Imaginative and multifaceted, the author born in 1960 in Güssing, Burgenland, playfully opens worlds that create a poetic resonance. With Heinz Janisch, the jury is awarding a children's lyricist for the first time.

Heinz Janisch studied German philology and journalism in Vienna, where he also lives today. Since 1982, he has been working at ORF radio and has been designing and moderating radio programs. He writes for both children and adults. His books have received numerous awards, including the Bologna Ragazzi Award and the Austrian Children’s and Youth Book Prize. In 2024, he was awarded the international Hans Christian Andersen Prize, honoring his life's work.

As part of the Kiel Liliencron Lectureship 2025, the Liliencron Young Talent Prize for poetry from Schleswig-Holstein will also be awarded for the second time. The awardee of the prize, which is granted as part of a project seminar of the Institute for Modern German Literature and Media at CAU Kiel, is the author Dara Brexendorf, who lives in Kiel. Her focus in writing is on multimedia works between prose, poetry, and images. In April 2023, her narrative Restwärme was published by SuKuLTuR. Since 2015, she has been a co-editor of the literary magazine Der Schnipsel.

Admission: 12,- / 8,- € plus fee

Organizer: Literaturhaus SH / Institute for Modern German Literature and Media at CAU Kiel with kind support from the Friends of Literaturhaus SH

»Until Everything Burns« - Hélène Laurain explores the possibilities of storytelling about our time in her debut novel - radically and poetically.

Laetitia is obsessed with the climate catastrophe and horrified by the plan to bury radioactive waste from France, Germany, and Luxembourg in her home region of Lorraine. So she orchestrates a spectacular coup with her friends, which is just a taste of the final inferno. Hélène Laurain's debut novel, written in one breath, tells of the wishes, hopes, and fears of a generation that believes it has lost the battle against climate change - and yet chooses activism.

The German texts will be read by students of the Romance Studies Seminar at CAU.

Hélène Laurain, born in Metz in 1988, studied political science and Arabic in France and Germany, as well as creative writing at the Université Paris VIII. »Until Everything Burns« | »Partout le feu« (translated from French by Isabel Kupski) is her first novel, with which she was a guest at the European Festival of Debut Novels in 2023.

Admission: 12,– / 8,– plus fees

Organizer: Literaturhaus SH / Centre Culturel Français / Deutsch-Französische Gesellschaft SH / Romance Studies Seminar CAU Kiel

»With a book into the weekend«: Finn-Ole Heinrich comes to a picture book reading for everyone aged 4 and up at the Literaturhaus

»Sleeping like the beetroots« – this is the turbulent picture book fun from the pen of Finn-Ole Heinrich and Dita Zipfel, illustrated by Tine Schulz. Step into the beetroot cave, where the Beet family snoozes according to all the rules of the art every evening, nestles in, gets cozy, snores in a contest, and throws themselves into the pillows. Everything is precisely regulated, with one hundred and three little details to observe: It starts with jumping around, then shaking donkey Olga, then grooming the sky, and then digesting the beds ... Well, that wasn’t quite right yet. But let’s just try again until it fits eventually – and everyone can fall asleep calmly.

On February 14th, Finn-Ole Heinrich will visit the Literaturhaus and read his wild bedtime rhyme, which becomes properly adjusted after a few repetitions and then becomes soft and calm. Both children from 4 years and adults are invited to listen to the fantastic ideas, ask questions to the author, and get books signed!

Finn-Ole Heinrich (*1982) is an award-winning author of story collections, novels (»Thief Hands«) and children’s books (»Maulina Schmitt«, »Frerk, you dwarf«). For his children’s books, he has received various awards, including the LUCHS in 2015, the Hamburger Tüddelband in 2014, the German-French Youth Literature Prize in 2014, and the German Youth Literature Prize in 2012. Dita Zipfel (*1981) writes picture books, plays, screenplays, and novels. Recently, she received the German Youth Literature Prize 2020 and the Korbinian – Paul Maar Prize 2020. Finn and Dita live together in Berlin and southern France.

Admission: 5,- € plus advance booking fee

Organizer: Junges Literaturhaus SH

The reading takes place in cooperation with the German Academy for Language and Poetry as part of the poetry recommendations.

»The first half hour in paradise«: Anne is in her early thirties and works as a pharmaceutical representative. The pressure she faces is overwhelming. But at the same time, she is also very ambitious. She lives in North Frisia and is set to become the new »Regional Manager Northern Schleswig-Holstein«. While she makes her career in the pharmaceutical industry, her brother, who is six years older, is struggling with addiction. The lives of the two siblings couldn't be more different, but it soon becomes clear that they are broken souls. When her brother asks for help, Anne realizes that they both have to confront the shadows of their past. In her second novel, Janine Adomeit tells, unvarnished and with subtle humor, about the longing for warmth, about pain, loneliness, and loss – and about comfort and the necessity of a shared memory.

»Sometimes you find someone you weren't even looking for. One day, he will wash up on your shore.«

Janine Adomeit, born in 1983 in Cologne, studied literature and linguistics in Munich. In 2021, she published her debut »On the Attempt to Catch a Silver Eel«. She lives with her family in Flensburg, where she also works as a literature mediator and founded the reading series TRANSIT.

Admission: 12,- / 8,- plus fee

Organizer: Literaturhaus SH

»Son Without a Father« – Feridun Zaimoglu tells in an unforgettable way about the journey of a grieving son to his father's grave in a foreign country and the unity of a family.

It is early in the morning when the mother calls to tell her son that his father has died. »He has gone to the righteous«, she says. Over 5000 km away from the place where his father died and his mother lives, the news of his father's death plunges the first-person narrator into despair. He must go to Turkey to support his mother and say goodbye to his father. The first-person narrator, a writer from Kiel, suffers from flight anxiety and asks two friends to accompany him by car. It is the beginning of an adventurous road trip through Europe and the start of a novel in which the narrator's grief and pain merge with vivid memories of his father's life, who once came to Europe as a guest worker, with the experiences of the journey and the pragmatic mother's phone calls into a single, powerful stream of thought. In his unmistakable tone, Feridun Zaimoglu narrates about grief and pain, about the unity of a family, and poses the question of how we remember those who are closest to us and yet sometimes seem foreign.

Feridun Zaimoglu (*1964) has lived in Germany since he was six months old. He studied art and medicine in Kiel, where he has since worked as a writer, screenwriter, and playwright. He has received numerous awards for his writing. Following »Leyla«, »Liebesbrand«, »Siebentürmeviertel«, »Evangelio«, and »The Story of Woman«, his latest novel »Coping« has been published.

Admission: 12,- / 8,- plus fees

Organizer: Literaturhaus SH