Karen Köhler

Karen Köhler (born in 1974 in Hamburg) is a German writer, playwright and actor.

Karen Köhler (2019)

Life

Karen Köhler was born in the Barmbek district of Hamburg. She is the daughter of a firefighter and a care home assistant.[1] After graduating from school, she studied acting at the Academy of Music and Theater in Bern. She worked as an actor until 2014, first in permanent positions and then as a freelancer. In 2008, she began working as an author (drama and prose) and illustrator.[2]

In 2010 she became a member of the Hamburg Authors Forum[3] and in 2011 she received the Hamburg Literature Prize. She was invited to give a reading at the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize ceremony in 2014 and received special attention as she was not allowed to attend the event because she had chickenpox. Out of solidarity with her, there was a spontaneous, unofficial reading of Karen Köhler's text Il Comandante[4] at Klagenfurt Lendhafen, which was broadcast on the Internet via livestream.[5] This text is part of her collection of stories Wir haben Raketen geangelt (We Fished for Rockets).[6] After its publication in the summer of 2014, it reached position 36 on the bestseller list for hardcover fiction,[7] was nominated for the Aspects Literature Prize and was translated into several languages.[8][9] Subsequently, Köhler won various scholarships and artist residencies.

From 2013 to 2015, she wrote a series of plays (a hero trilogy) dealing with the topic of right-wing extremism for the DNT Weimar, which have since been performed in theatres throughout Germany.

In 2019, Köhler was nominated for the German Screenplay Award, which was awarded at the 2019 Berlin International Film Festival, for Cowboy & Indianer (Cowboys & Indians).

She has received several scholarships, including a one-year scholarship from the German Literature Fund for her debut novel Miroloi. Miroloi was published in 2019 by Carl Hanser Verlag[10] and was on the long list for the 2019 German Book Prize.

Karen Köhler lives in Hamburg.

Works

Theatre
  • Pornorama. Ein Männermärchen (Pornorama. A Man Tale). Premiered in 2010.
  • Wie ich unter einer Platane eine Erleuchtung hatte, warum sterben uncool ist und das Brot meiner Oma glücklich macht (How I Reached Enlightenment under a Plane Tree, Why Dying Is Uncool and Why My Grandma's Bread Makes You Happy). Premiered in 2012.
  • Ramayana. Ein Heldenversuch (Ramayana. A Heroic Attempt). Premiered at the Baden State Theatre in 2013.
  • Deine Helden – Meine Träume (Your Heroes – My Dreams). Premiered at DNT Weimar in 2013.
  • Helden! Oder: Warum ich einen grünen Umhang trage und gegen die Beschissenheit der Welt ankämpfe (Heroes! Or: Why I Wear a Green Cape and Fight the Shittiness of the World). Premiered at the DNT Weimar in 2014.
  • III Helden: Stadt. Land. Traum. (III Heroes: City. Country. Dream.) Premiered at the DNT Weimar in 2015.
  • ER. SIE. ES. (HE. SHE. IT.) Premiered at the Baden State Theatre in 2016.
  • Himmelwärts (Skybound), Premiered at the Theater Ingolstadt in 2022.
  • Sieres – Fragmente einer scheinbaren Aporie Scenic reading at Berliner Ensemble 2022.

Prose
  • Wir haben Raketen geangelt (We've been fishing Fireworks). Stories. Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-446-24602-7. Translated into French, Dutch, Turkish, Albanian.
  • Miroloi. Novel. Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-446-26171-6. Translated into Italian, Greek, Chinese.

Audio books
  • Wir haben Raketen geangelt (We've been fishing Fireworks). Stories. Read by Sandra Hüller and Karen Köhler. Roof Music/Tacheles! Bochum 2015, ISBN 978-3-86484-279-5.
  • Miroloi. Novel. Read by Karen Köhler. Roof Music/Tacheles! Bochum 2019, ISBN 978-3-86484-595-6.

Translations
  • Nick Drnaso, Sabrina. Graphic Novel. Translated by Karen Köhler and Daniel Beskos. Blumenbar Verlag, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-351-05071-9.
  • Steven Withrow, Abzählreim (Counting Rhyme) (Poem), translated by Karen Köhler. In Kenn Nesbitt: Jetzt noch ein Gedicht und dann aus das Licht! (English language version: One Minute Until Bedtime), Hanser Verlag, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-446-26438-0.
  • Nick Drnaso, Acting Class. Graphic Novel. Übersetzt von Karen Köhler und Daniel Beskos. Blumenbar / Aufbau Verlag, Graphic Novel. Translated by Karen Köhler and Daniel Beskos. Blumenbar Verlag, Berlin 2022 ISBN 978-3-351-05102-0.

Publishing
  • Akzente 3 / 2019 – Briefe an den Täter (Akzente 3 / 2019 – Letters to the Perpetrator). Magazine series by Akzente. Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-446-26329-1.

Awards

Literature
  • Theo Breuer: Zwanzig Tage – Zwanzig Romane: Ein Buchspiel (Twenty Days – Twenty Novels: A Book Game). In: Matrix. Zeitschrift für Literatur und Kunst (Magazine for Literature and Art), Edition 58., Pop Verlag, Ludwigsburg 2019, pp. 7–167.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Karen Köhler.

References
  1. Poesie-Arbeiterin, Hamburger Abendblatt 24 March 2011, retrieved 7 September 2019.
  2. Karenina Illustration, Hamburg
  3. Forum Hamburger Autorinnen und Autoren, Karen Köhler
  4. Il Comandante – vollständiger Text: "Il comandante - KARENINA". Archived from the original on 19 December 2014. Retrieved 26 May 2020.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  5. Sandra Kegel (4 July 2014). "Wie wohl die Juroren das gefunden hätten?". FAZ.net. Retrieved 13 October 2018.
  6. 'Wir haben Raketen geangelt' (We fished for rockets), Vorabdruck, Zeit Online, 18 August 2014.
  7. Buchreport, Wir haben Raketen geangelt – Bestellerliste Hardcover Belletristik, 2014.
  8. Marc Reichwein (24 August 2014). "Debütband: Karen Köhler erzählt von Cowboys, Indianern und Raketen". welt.de. Retrieved 7 October 2018.
  9. "Da ist Meisterschaft am Werk" schrieb Ursula März in Die Zeit, 21 August 2014.
  10. Buchreport, Miroloi – Bestsellerliste Hardcover Belletristik, 2019.
  11. "Literaturstadt Reykjavik – von innen betrachtet". blog.goethe.de.
  12. "Deutsche Botschaft in Albanien". Internetseite
  13. "Karen Köhler as WiR in Amsterdam". www.letterenfonds.nl. Nederlands Letterenfonds
  14. "Karen Köhler – Autoren". www.hanser-literaturverlage.de. Hanser Literaturverlage
  15. "Artists in residence". Höhentrainingslager für Künstler, Laudinella (St. Moritz)
  16. "Deutscher Literaturfonds – Aktuelles – Ergebnisse der Kuratoriumssitzung vom 6. und 7. November 2017". deutscher-literaturfonds.de.
  17. "Goethe-Institut Frankreich". www.goethe.de.
  18. "Deutscher Drehbuchpreis 2019: Kulturstaatsministerin Monika Grütters gibt Nominierungen bekannt (VDD)". www.drehbuchautoren.de. 10 January 2019. Nominierungen, 10 January 2019.
  19. "Deutscher Buchpreis 2019, Longlist". www.deutscher-buchpreis.de. Nominierungen, 20 August 2019, retrieved 7 September 2019.
  20. "Deutscher Literaturfonds". Deutscher Literaturfonds. 10-wöchige Stipendium an der Queen Mary University, London
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.