Glossen

Gabrielle Alioth, born in Basel, Switzerland, studied Economics and the History of Art and worked in Econometric Forecasting before emigrating to Ireland in 1984. Her first novel Der Narr (1990) received the Hamburg literary award for best first novel. Her ninth and most recent novel Die entwendete Handschrift appeared in 2016. She was inter alia Swiss writer in residence at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, guest lecturer at the Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, and writer in residence at University College Dublin. Since 2004 she also teaches at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts.

Michael Blumenthal, is Visiting Professor of Law at The WV University College of Law, and the author of eight books of poetry, most recently No Hurry: Poems 2000-2012, published in 2012. Formerly Director of Creative Writing at Harvard, he is the author of the memoir All My Mothers and Fathers (Vandalia Press, 2016), and Dusty Angel (BOA Editions, 1999). His novel Weinstock Among the Dying won Hadassah Magazine’s Harold U. Ribelow Prize for the best work of Jewish fiction. “Because They Needed Me:” The Incredible Struggle of Rita Miljo to Save the Baboons of South Africa was published in Germany in 2012 and in the U.S. in May of 2016.

Albrecht Classen ist University Distinguished Professor of German Studies an der University of Arizona. Einerseits hat er ein umfangreiches wissenschaftliches Programm zum Mittelalter und zur Frühneuzeit vorgelegt (ca. 90 Bücher, ca. 630 Aufsätze), andererseits hat er sich auch zu einem produktiven Dichter entwickelt (9 Bände eigene Gedichte bisher). Er veröffentlicht regelmäßig in Trans-Lit2 u.a. Er ist Hrsg. der wiss. Zeitschriften Mediaevistik und Humanities Open Access, dazu auch der Redakteur für Rezensionen in Trans-Lit2.

Rita Dove was born in Akron, Ohio in 1952. She served as Poet Laureate of the United States (1993-1995) and as Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia (2004-2006). Among numerous literary and academic honors, she has received the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and the 2003 Emily Couric Leadership Award. President Clinton awarded her the 1996 National Humanities Medal, and President Barack Obama presented her with the 2011 National Medal of Arts. Her latest book is Collected Poems 1974-2004 (W.W. Norton & Co. 2016). Rita Dove currently holds the chair of Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

Michael Eskin is an award-winning author, critic, translator, and publisher. He was educated in Israel, Germany, France, and the U.S. and is the co-founder and Vice President of Upper West Side Philosophers, Inc. He has taught at the University of Cambridge and at Columbia University. He has many publications on cultural, literary, and philosophical subjects and his translations have appeared in The New Yorker and Sport 40. A member of The Authors Guild, the Academy of American Poets, and P.E.N. International, he has been on radio programs and lectured regularly across the US and Europe. He lives in New York City.

Jeanne Finkelstein Goodman (Website) grew up in New Rochelle, NY and received her BFA from Syracuse University.  She taught at the University of Massachusetts as an MFA candidate. Her work is included in numerous collections in the United States, including many universities and college galleries. She is included in the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum as part of the permanent collection of the National Association of Women’s art, and her work has been in juried exhibitions and received awards, most recently in the “Small Works Exhibit” at The Charles Taylor Art Center in Hampton, VA (2016). In addition to being included in 100 Southern Artists (2012), her work is published widely.

Luisa A. Igloria (http://www.luisaigloria.com) is the winner of the 2015 Resurgence Prize (UK), the world’s first major award for ecopoetry, selected by former UK poet laureate Sir Andrew Motion, Alice Oswald, and Jo Shapcott. She is the author of Bright as Mirrors Left in the Grass (Kudzu House Press eChapbook selection for Spring 2015), Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser (selected by Mark Doty for the 2014 May Swenson Prize, Utah State University Press), Night Willow (Phoenicia Publishing, Montreal, 2014), The Saints of Streets (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2013), Juan Luna’s Revolver (2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize, University of Notre Dame Press), and nine other books. She teaches on the faculty of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University, which she directed from 2009-2015.

Freya Klier, born in 1950 in Dresden, is an author, film director, and freedom activist. She began her career in theater in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the 1970s. In the 1980s, Klier became active in the peace movement in Pankow, demanding reforms and calling for the awareness of state crimes. In 1987, the Ministry for State Security (Ministerium for Staatssicherheit) attempted to murder Klier and her husband, imprisoned them both in early 1988, and forced them to leave the GDR in the same year. Klier is dedicated to making the public aware of past and present human rights violations in Germany and abroad. She is a founding member of the Bürgerbüro e.V. and a member of the PEN Center of German-Speaking Writers Abroad. She has received many prizes for her activism and her writing.

Frederick A. Lubich, 1951 als Kind mährischer Eltern im schwäbischen Göppingen geboren und aufgewachsen. Autor von über 350 Veröffentlichungen einschlieβlich Fachbüchern zu Thomas Mann, Max Frisch, Paradigmenwechseln der Moderne, sowie literaturwissenschaftlichen Aufsätzen, journalistischen Essays (Argentinisches Tageblatt, New Yorker Aufbau, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung etc), Übersetzer (u.a. von Yoko Onos Rockoper New York Story und deutsch-amerikanischen Drehbüchern), Herausgeber mehrerer Sammelbände und Autor von rund hundert lyrischen Publikationen auf Schallplatte, in Literaturzeitschriften und Lyrik-Anthologien. Lehraufträge an sieben amerikanischen Colleges und Universitäten und Gastvorträge in über 30 Ländern, sowie Features und Interviews in Rundfunk und Fernsehen in Deutschland, Amerika, Finnland, Marokko und Ägypten.

Bettina Matthias is Professor of German at Middlebury College and Director of the German Summer Language School at Middlebury. As an academic, she has written books and articles on Arthur Schnitzler, turn-of-the century Vienna, Weimar Germany, and hotel-culture in early twentieth century German and Austrian literature, on the German humorist Loriot, as well as on the place of the arts in foreign language teaching. As a creative writer, she mostly writes short stories, and her true creative passion lies in theater—since 2001, she has produced and directed more than thirty German-language plays and operas with her students.

Hans Mayer wurde 1951 in Göppingen/Baden Württemberg geboren und hat nach dem Studium der Soziologie, Politologie, Volkswirtschaftslehre, des Völkerrechts und der Verwaltungswissenschaften eine Tätigkeit in der Entwicklungspolitischen Zusammenarbeit aufgenommen. Er verbrachte viele Jahre im südlichen Afrika und im arabischen Raum und arbeitete nach dem Zusammenbruch der Sowjetunion für die postkommunistischen Nachfolgestaaten, unter anderem auch in Kasachstan. Nach dem Ende seiner beruflichen Tätigkeit hat er wieder angefangen zu schreiben, verfasst biografische Bücher und Artikel. Derzeit geht er der Geschichte einer deutsch-jüdischen Spirituosenfirma nach. Autobiografisches Material ist in Vorbereitung.

Michael Panitz is an academician and a rabbi. He teaches courses in Hebrew language, Religious Studies, and History at Old Dominion University and at Virginia Wesleyan College, and serves as the spiritual leader of “Temple Israel”, all in Norfolk, Virginia. Dr. Panitz sees the pastoral and the academic sides of his career as several means to the end of fostering ethical and multi- cultural community. In his scholarly publications, Dr. Panitz has focused on aspects of Jewish intellectual and social history illuminating the interaction of Jews with the cultures and ideas of their contemporaries. He is currently researching and writing “See, O Israel”, an intellectual-historical guide to cinematic retellings of Bible stories.

Utz Rachowski, born 1954 in Saxony (Germany). He was a former political prisoner in East Germany and was sentenced to 27 months in jail due to five of his own poems. He published 14 books with stories, essays and poetry. He has received the Reiner Kunze Prize (2007), the Hermann-Hesse-Grant (2008), and the Nikolaus-Lenau-Prize (2014). In 2013 he was nominated in the US for a Pushcart Prize. He is a member of the P.E.N.-Centre of German-Speaking Writers Abroad.

Axel Reitel was born in April 1961 in Plauen, Vogtland, near the inner German border. As a result of the visible, public violence directed against the people, he took an early stand under the second Herman dictatorship. After two arrests and convictions by the Stasi, he was ransomed in the year 1982 by the Federal Democratic Republic. From 1985 to 1990, he studied art history and philosophy at the TU-Berlin (West). Since 1990 he is an anti-totalitarian freelance writer of prose, poetry, essay, and songs.

Anna Rosmus, real-life heroine of the film The Nasty Girl, has dedicated her life to uncovering the Nazi past of her hometown and to combating neo-Nazis. As a freelance writer, she has contributed numerous essays to magazines and newspapers, such as La Pensée et les Hommes, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, The New York Times, and The European. Twice, Anna Rosmus was featured in a 60 Minutes profile. To many, she represents the legacy of the Holocaust in memory, education, and action in the continuing struggle against bigotry. The D.C. Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and the American Immigration Law Foundation honored her with the Immigrant Achievement Award as a “distinguished Immigrant who through her extraordinary endeavors has made a substantial contribution to the United States of America and is a proud reflection of the values of this nation.”

Lee Slater studied at Brown University before teaching world literature and French at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.  Her work includes scholarly essays on emergent cultural expressions in post-conflict Rwanda, from spoken word poetry to stand-up comedy, and translations of contemporary African poetry. Since 2009 she has traveled often to Kigali, Rwanda to teach creative writing workshops to a young generation of Rwandan writers and spoken word artists and seminars on African women’s literature.

Gerald Uhlig-Romero wurde in Heidelberg geboren. Er studierte Musik und darstellende Kunst in Wien und ist Regisseur, Schauspieler, Gründer des Cafe und der Galerie Einstein in Berlin, wo er Fotoausstellungen mit internationalen Fotokünstlern wie Dennis Hopper, Wim Wenders, Helmut Newton realisiert.

Achim Viereck, geboren 1951 in Würzburg. Studium der Agrarwissenschaften an der Universität Hohenheim. Er arbeitet in der Agrarforschung (Mexiko), Entwicklungshilfe (Kapverden und Philippinen), danach im Bundesernährungsministerium in Bonn und Berlin. Im Rahmen dieser Tätigkeit auch über zehn Jahre in Lateinamerika als Landwirtschaftsreferent an den Botschaften Brasilia und Buenos Aires tätig. Er lernte Robert Schopflocher in Buenos Aires kennen und betrachtet seine Freundschaft mit diesem Autor als größtes Geschenk seiner Auslandstätigkeit.

Susan Wansink is Professor of German at Virginia Wesleyan College in Norfolk, VA and architecture photographer. Website

Peter Wortsman, the American-born son of Austrian-Jewish refugees, writes in English and German. His most recent publications are: Cold Earth Wanderers, a novel; Footprints in Wet Cement, short prose; New York, NY 1978, a photo essay with photographs by Jean-Luc Dubin and text by Peter Wortsman; and Konundrum, Selected Prose of Franz Kafka, a new translation. He was a Holtzbrinck Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin in 2010 and a fellow of the Österreichische Gesellschaft für Literatur in Vienna in 2016.