The jury

Silke Behl

Silke Behl, a literary scholar, has worked as a freelance journalist for the German broadcasters NDR, WDR and DLF since the early 1980s. From 1986 to 1991, she taught German literature at Universitas Indonesia in Jakarta. In 1991, she began working as culture editor for Radio Bremen, where she covers literature. Behl helped create the literary festival “poetry on the road” in Bremen and is chairperson of the Literaturhaus (Literature House) Bremen.

Mara Delius

Mara Delius, born in 1979, grew up in Berlin and studied literary studies and philosophy in London. She did extensive research work at Stanford University, USA, and earned her DPhil at King’s College London in 2008. From 2008 to 2010, she worked for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung and was Europe correspondent for the British magazine Standpoint. From 2011 to 2016, she was an editor and writer for the feuilletons of Welt and Welt am Sonntag. Since 2006, she has regularly spent extended periods as a correspondent in the USA. In March 2017, she became director of the literary supplement Literarischen Welt.

Christian Dunker

Christian Dunker, born in Berlin in 1972, studied social and business communications at the University of the Arts. He analysed the potential of programming for the German production company UFA and, after earning a degree for his thesis on the identity of the Academy of the Arts, worked as a project and PR manager in agencies and as an office manager in the German Bundestag. In 2010, he was in charge of the Suhrkamp Pop Up Store, which he subsequently left to join the autorenbuchhandlung berlin, where he develops and moderates events with authors and artists, including Terézia Mora, Clemens Setz, T.C. Boyle, Colm Tóibín, Michael Ballhaus and Diane von Fürstenberg. Since 2013, he has been editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Geistesblüten.

Katja Gasser

Born in Klagenfurt/Celovec in 1975, Katja Gasser wrote her dissertation on Ilse Aichinger and Günter Eich. From 1999 to 2001, she was a university lecturer in Oxford/London. She subsequently worked as a freelance journalist in Vienna, preparing radio features (for Ö1) about Ilse Aichinger’s twin sister Helga Michie, Ezra Pound, Juli Zeh, Ivan Cankar, etc. Beginning in 2005, she was an editor in the culture department of ORF television and, since late 2008, has been director of the literature department of ORF-TV. She covered international contemporary literature and created cinematic works with/about Marica Bodrožić, Friederike Mayröcker, Peter Handke, Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, etc. Lately, she has made a film about the great Austrian author and Slovenian native speaker Florjan Lipuš. She has moderated various literary events, with a focus on literature from Southern and Eastern Europe.

Maria Gazzetti

Maria Gazzetti was born in Viterbo, Italy. She studied philosophy, history, Romance languages and literature, German language and literature and art history in Rome and Hamburg, where she earned her doctorate. She has written articles for the feuilletons of the newspapers Die Tageszeitung (“taz”), Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Die Zeit. She is the author of various publications and translations and is also active as a scout for Italian publishers. She created and realized the “Europäischen Literaturdialoge” (“European Literature Dialogues”) for the Stiftung Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony Foundation) (1993-1996). From 1996 to 2010, she was director of the Literaturhaus (Literature House) in Frankfurt am Main, and, from December 2010 to June 2013, managing director of the Lyrik Kabinett Foundation in Munich. Since September 2013, she has been director of the Casa di Goethe in Rome. A literary scholar, she has participated in various juries, including those for the Kranichsteiner Literature Prize and the Jean Paul Prize of the city of Munich.

Tobias Lehmkuhl

Tobias Lehmkuhl, born in 1976, studied in Bonn, Barcelona and Berlin, where he now lives and works as an independent critic and author. He writes for, among others, Die Zeit, Süddeutsche Zeitung and the German public radio station Deutschlandfunk. He most recently published “Die Odyssee. Ein Abenteuer” (Rowohlt Berlin, 2012).

Lothar Schröder

Lothar Schröder, born in 1963, is director of the culture department at the Rheinische Post. He studied German language and literature, philosophy, history and political science and earned his doctorate with a thesis on the poet Albert Vigoleis Thelen. His publications as author and publisher include, among others, “Die 100 besten Kinder- und Jugendbücher”, “200 Jahre Düsseldorfer Zeitungsgeschichte”, “Ein Plädoyer für die Wissensgesellschaft” as well as, most recently, “Die deutschsprachigen Literaturnobelpreisträger”.