Hilde Zach Literature Grant: Literary solution to current issues
Friederike Gösweiner knows how to find literary answers to the big questions of the present. She also inspires with the concise narrative style, which critically reflects on the complexity of the present and penetrates it in literature. For this she received the Hilde Zach Literature Grant from the jury.
(IKM) Two young Tyrolean authors will receive the “Hilde Zach Literature Grant 2022” in the city library on November 16: Friederike Gösweiner received the main grant of 7,000 euros. Kathrin Schaber, also known as Thordis Wolf, receives the literature grant of 3,000 euros. City Councilor for Culture Uschi Schwarzl congratulated: “With the Hilde Zach literature grants, we support the literary work of both established and previously unknown writers. I am very pleased that we can support her in her writing work.”
Jury statement
“With Friederike Gösweiner, we are honoring an author who understands how to approach the great challenges of our time in a literary manner and at the same time assert a clear, independent aesthetic position. With her previous work, she has established herself as one of the younger authors in Austrian literature. With her new novel, she addresses her central existential, even private-family questions, as well as higher-level, not least European, moments. Friederike Gösweiner knows how to inspire with her succinct narrative style, to critically reflect on the complexity of our reality and to penetrate it in a literary way” said the jury, consisting of Doris Eibl from the Institute for Romance Studies, Gudrun Hamböck, editor at Radio Ö1 and Thomas Ballhausen, writer , literary and film scholars agree. The jury selected the two authors as prizewinners from 24 submissions.
To the award winners
Friederike Gosweiner (born 1980 in Rum) increased German and political science in Innsbruck and received his doctorate in 2009 with a thesis on “Loneliness in the young German-language literature of the present”. Since then she has been working as a freelance author, literary critic and proofreader. Her debut novel “Sad Freedom” (Droschl 2016) was awarded the Austrian Book Prize (Debut). Her first libretto, based on Yasushi Inoue’s novella “The Hunting Rifle” for the composer Thomas Larcher, premiered at the Bregenz Festival in 2018. Her second novel “Regenbogenweiß” was published in spring 2022 (Droschl).
Catherine Schaber alias Thordis Wolf (b. 1985) deals with bodies and space in all their forms in her works. Your language is the language of emotions. Aesthetics and the bizarre are not juxtaposed, but intertwined to form a vulnerable network. Her work has been part of various exhibitions and performances, her texts and photographs have been published in magazines worldwide.
Read more news from Innsbruck here.