Seal of the University of Heidelberg
Bild / picture

Clemens Brentano Young Authors’ Prize of the City of Heidelberg 2008 Awarded to Ann Cotten

15 February 2008

The award is unique in Germany as the jury includes not only professional literary critics but also students from Heidelberg University’s Department of Germanic Studies

The Clemens Brentano Young Authors’ Prize is endowed with 10,000 euros. This year it has been awarded for poetry and the recipient is Ann Cotten, born in Iowa in 1982. She has won the Prize for her first volume of poetry Fremdwörterbuchsonette, published by Suhrkamp. Ann Cotten lived in Vienna from 1987 to 2006, subsequently moving to Berlin. After studying German, a course she rounded off with a dissertation on lists in concrete poetry, she currently devotes her time to poetry, short stories, novels and translation.

The jury was impressed by what it called her "anarchic formal awareness and her unorthodox artistry", going on to commend the way in which Ann Cotten "breathes new life into the sonnet tradition and gives poetic resonance to un-poetic material". The members of the jury were literary critic Ursula März (Berlin), literary critic Marius Meller (Berlin), writer Burkhard Spinnen (Münster) and the Heidelberg University students Anika Meier, Irmela Wagner and Andree Weber, all from the Department of Germanic Studies. Chairman and moderator was Uwe Kossack (literary editor, South-West German Broadcasting Corporation, Baden-Baden).

The Clemens Brentano Young Authors’ Prize has been in existence since 1993. It is awarded annually to young German-speaking authors whose work has attracted the attention of critics and the reading public. It focuses alternately on narrative prose, essays, novels and poetry. The Prize is unique in Germany as the jury includes not only professional literary critics but also students from Heidelberg University’s Department of Germanic Studies.

The recipients of the Prize so far are Clemens Meyer, Stefan Weidner, Anna Katharina Hahn, Raphael Urweider, Andreas Maier, Doron Rabinovici, Sabine Peters, Hendrik Rost, Oswald Egger, Norbert Niemann, Benjamin Korn, Daniel Zahno, Jörg Schieke, Barbara Köhler, Gabriele Kögl and Günter Coufal.

On 1 July 2008 the Prize will be presented to Ann Cotten by Heidelberg CEO Dr. Eckart Würzner. Ann Cotten will be giving a public reading of her works at Heidelberg Municipal Library on 2 July 2008 at 7.30 p.m.

Please address any inquiries to
Press and Public Information Office
City of Heidelberg
phone: 06221/5812000 or 5812010, fax: 5812900
oeffentlichkeitsarbeit@heidelberg.de

Dr. Michael Schwarz
Public Information Officer
University of Heidelberg
phone: 06221/542310, fax: 542317
michael.schwarz@rektorat.uni-heidelberg.de

Irene Thewalt
phone: 06221/542310, fax: 542317
presse@rektorat.uni-heidelberg.de
Editor: Email
top of page