Sasha Marianna Salzmann Awarded the Kleist-Preis 2024
News02.05.2024
Suhrkamp author, playwright, and essayist Sasha Marianna Salzmann has been awarded the Kleist-Preis for 2024.
Each year, the jury of the prize names an individual to select the winner of the award. This year, that person was the author Samira El Ouassil, who selected Salzmann. In her remarks, El Ouassil said: »Sasha Salzmann is distinguished by their impressive talent for exploring our present moment through their art, while at the same time negotiating the things that remain beyond our grasp. Salzmann’s writing is that of a simultaneity – multi-layered, complex, oscillating social fields in which unambiguity is forbidden, Salzmann writes themself and us into our heads and hearts, and helps the reader to learn to endure these unbearable ambivalences. Salzmann uses their writing not just as an ornamental means of illustration, but as a tool for penetrating reality, and all with such beauty and grounding that one simply falls in love with the texts. Making Salzmann the ideal winner of the Kleist-Preis!«
The Kleist-Preis is endowed with €20,000 and is sponsored by the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, the Federal German Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media and the Berlin and Brandenburg Ministries of Science, Research and Culture. Previous winners include Alexander Kluge, Thomas Brasch, Heiner Müller, Ernst Jandl, Monika Maron, Herta Müller, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Daniel Kehlmann, Wilhelm Genazino, Arnold Stadler, Navid Kermani, Marcel Beyer, Monika Rinck, Yoko Tawada, Christoph Ransmayr, Ilma Rakusa, Clemens J. Setz, Esther Kinsky, and most recently, Thomas Kunst.
The Kleist-Preis jury, which proposes potential prize-winners, was made up of Andrea Bartl (University of Bamberg), Florian Borchmeyer (freelance dramaturg), Anne Fleig (Freie Universität Berlin), Johannes Franzen (University of Siegen; freelance critic) Janika Gelinek (Literaturhaus Berlin) and Claudia Kramatschek (Cultural Office of the City of Heidelberg; freelance critic).
Salzmann’s most recent publication with Suhrkamp is the book Real Time, a correspondence with Israeli writer and musician Ofer Waldman in the wake of the 7th of October. For more information on this or any other of Salzmann’s books, contact the rights manager for your region.
Each year, the jury of the prize names an individual to select the winner of the award. This year, that person was the author Samira El Ouassil, who selected Salzmann. In her remarks, El Ouassil said: »Sasha Salzmann is distinguished by their impressive talent for exploring our present moment through their art, while at the same time negotiating the things that remain beyond our grasp. Salzmann’s writing is that of a simultaneity – multi-layered, complex, oscillating social fields in which unambiguity is forbidden, Salzmann writes themself and us into our heads and hearts, and helps the reader to learn to endure these unbearable ambivalences. Salzmann uses their writing not just as an ornamental means of illustration, but as a tool for penetrating reality, and all with such beauty and grounding that one simply falls in love with the texts. Making Salzmann the ideal winner of the Kleist-Preis!«
The Kleist-Preis is endowed with €20,000 and is sponsored by the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, the Federal German Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media and the Berlin and Brandenburg Ministries of Science, Research and Culture. Previous winners include Alexander Kluge, Thomas Brasch, Heiner Müller, Ernst Jandl, Monika Maron, Herta Müller, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Daniel Kehlmann, Wilhelm Genazino, Arnold Stadler, Navid Kermani, Marcel Beyer, Monika Rinck, Yoko Tawada, Christoph Ransmayr, Ilma Rakusa, Clemens J. Setz, Esther Kinsky, and most recently, Thomas Kunst.
The Kleist-Preis jury, which proposes potential prize-winners, was made up of Andrea Bartl (University of Bamberg), Florian Borchmeyer (freelance dramaturg), Anne Fleig (Freie Universität Berlin), Johannes Franzen (University of Siegen; freelance critic) Janika Gelinek (Literaturhaus Berlin) and Claudia Kramatschek (Cultural Office of the City of Heidelberg; freelance critic).
Salzmann’s most recent publication with Suhrkamp is the book Real Time, a correspondence with Israeli writer and musician Ofer Waldman in the wake of the 7th of October. For more information on this or any other of Salzmann’s books, contact the rights manager for your region.