DEBÜTANT*INNENBALL: Anja Gmeinwieser / Martin Piekar / Lara Rüter - 40. Freiburger Literaturgespräch: Drei Debüts im Gespräch
Anja Gmeinwieser: We Queens
Moderation: Leo Boquoi
Three books, three songs, one evening! Three amazing debuts that raise big questions: What is a human, what is an animal? Who are my neighbors? What language do we speak?
Anja Gmeinwieser opens the series with her road novel "We Queens" (Berlin Verlag, 2026) and a mobile phone that "flies off the first peak" of the Alps with an exaggerated gesture. Fleeing from her too-normal life, the narrator encounters Anna, who is steering a heavy transport of pregnant cows to Turkey. What starts as a spontaneous "I'll go with you" becomes an approach via international bad English and a sometimes hallucinating mobile translator, a love affair between highways. But as it gets hotter in the transporter, the animals fall ill and Anna's boss doesn't pay, it also becomes a hell trip – to the EU's external border, where dreams and cows run aground.
"These two women are not just novel figures; they are solidarity, hope, rebellion," writes author Mareike Fallwickl about Gmeinwieser's debut, which brushes against the classic Western plot of cattle drives and connects with questions of motherhood, work, and identity.
Martin Piekar: On Cutting a Family Tree
Moderation: Sonja Karadza
When Martin Piekar read excerpts from his debut novel "On Cutting a Family Tree" (Rowohlt, 2026) at the Bachmann Prize reading in 2023, he impressed with precise, poetic language – and a loud, long scream: The scream of the overwhelm of a young man who grows up fatherless with his mother in a small two-room apartment and cares for her until her death after a cancer diagnosis.
Marcin is the name of the young man. In the 1980s, his mother fled with him from Poland to Germany, worked as a caregiver, and struggled with addiction. While Marcin searches for his place among video games, nu metal, and poems, the two live in a closeness between care and abysses. With the mother’s illness, the family history comes to light in all its force: From memories, anecdotes, and painful realizations emerges the portrait of a German-Polish family, in which war, migration, and social exclusion continue to have an impact today.
Lara Rüter: Monkey Love
Moderation: Katharina Knüppel
At the bulletin board, Lara Rüter read the notice: "Help needed in primate research." The poet spent five years in the monkey house of the Leipzig Zoo, anchoring her reflections on closeness, loss, longing, and boundaries there. Her essay "Monkey Love" (Hanser, 2026) measures the gap between humans and their closest relatives, reflecting personal experiences of the author in the peculiar social behavior of the animals: an abortion, for which she feels the political pressure of what women are supposed to want. The search for her biological father and the relationship with her "cuckoo father." The result is a highly literary, permeable text that intertwines autobiographical and inventive storytelling with quotes from Roland Barthes, Emily Dickinson, and Martina Hefter, alongside scientific inquiries and scenes in the enclosure.
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Photos: Anja Gmeinwieser © Linda Sier, Martin Piekar © Charlotte Werndt, Lara Rüter © Michael Bader
Supporters: Cultural Office of the City of Freiburg, Ministry of Science, Research and Arts of Baden-Württemberg, Sparkasse Freiburg-Northern Breisgau, Guzzoni-Federer Foundation, Deutsche Pfandbriefbank
Cooperation partners: Theater im Marienbad, Bookstore jos fritz
Cultural partner: SWR Culture
Date: 6.11.2026, 18–20:00
Location: Theater im Marienbad, Marienstraße 4
Entry: 11/7 Euro / Combination ticket (incl. comic reading with Mia Oberländer) with drink: 18/12 Euro
Literature Discussion
Out of House
Remaining tickets may be available at short notice
Hallo, ich bin Maya.
