Radka Denemarková Member of the German Academy for Language and Poetry

Poet Tadeusz Dąbrowski, German scholar Gisela Holfter and writers Eva Menasse and Radka Denemarková have been elected as new members of the German Academy for Language and Poetry. The Academy now has 196 members.

The German Academy for Language and Literature was founded in 1949 in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt am Main and has been dedicated exclusively to the German language and literature since 1951 with its headquarters in Darmstadt. The Academy’s main task is to closely follow the development of language, to bring forgotten or marginalized literature back into the conversation, to discuss literary, linguistic and cultural-critical topics, to promote the free exchange of opinions and to contribute to a differentiated culture of debate, as well as to award prizes to outstanding authors. Its members include renowned writers, critics and translators, as well as linguists and literary scholars, but also lawyers and natural scientists. Only personalities who have served the German language and German literature through their work and influence are elected as members.

Radka Denemarková, born in 1968, is a Czech author, playwright, screenwriter, essayist and translator of German literature who teaches creative writing. She is the only Czech author to have won the Magnesia Litera Prize three times (in the categories of prose, non-fiction and translation). Her works have been translated into more than 20 languages. In 2017 she was the city writer of Graz and in 2022 she received the Styrian Literature Prize. She was awarded the Spycher: Leuk Literature Prize 2019 for her novel “Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Freude” (Hoffmann und Campe 2019) and the Brücke Berlin Prize 2022 together with her translator Eva Profousová for her novel“Stunden aus Blei” (Hoffmann und Campe 2022).

Further information on the author can be found here and on the German Academy for Language and Poetry here.”