Reading by the winner of the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern 2024 Literature Prize with Steffen Dürre
A professional chicken farmer who is no longer a professional chicken farmer has to figure out what to do with his life - this is the origin of the story by writer and journalist Juli Katz, with which she won the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern 2024 Literature Prize. In 2025, she is on a reading tour through MV and stops off in Greifswald. Here she will read texts from and about Vorpommern with Rostock author and literary editor Steffen Dürre. Katz and Dürre talk about writing and where you go when you set off.
Juli Katz, born in 1990, studied Creative Writing and Cultural Journalism as well as Applied Literary Studies. She came to Greifswald in 2019 to help set up KATAPULT magazine and works as a freelance journalist and author in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. She now writes for regional and national media. She also stayed in the state because of her dog and chicken.
Steffen Dürre won the Mecklenbrug-Vorpommern 2024 online audience award and is considered the most successful self-publishing author far beyond the state's borders and is unjustly underestimated as such. Recognizing this fact, he has decided to "[s]tart this identity sustainably through active authoring". Because, Dürre concludes: "Only by writing do I have the opportunity to continue to successfully prevent myself." He accepts the possibility of an uncontrollably growing readership in this way as an acceptable misfortune. "I'm slowly getting ready to finally be discovered," says Dürre. Consequently, he is now working on a book publication. Until then, he will only sign unpublished works.
