In a collaborative project, German Studies at The University at Warwick, together with the Sub-Faculty of German at the University of Oxford, was hosting the prominent German author Olga Grjasnowa within the framework of the DAAD Writer-in-Residence-Programme in 2018.

Born into a Russian-Jewish family in Baku, Azerbaijan, in 1984, Grjasnowa came to Germany with her family in 1996 as so-called “quota refugee”. She obtained a degree in Creative Writing at the prestigious German Institute for Literature in Leipzig and belongs to one of the first generations of acclaimed authors graduating from here.

Olga Grjasnowa is one of the most important literary voices of her generation, and her novels have been translated into several languages. Two of her novels have already been adapted for the stage at the Maxim Gorki Theatre Berlin (Yael Ronen 2013, Nurkan Erpulat 2014). Grjasnowa also contributes regularly to current political discussions on topics such as Heimat and Migration with journalistic pieces in newspapers as well as essays.

The project was kindly supported by the following institutions: German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD); Goethe Institute London; School of Modern Languages and Cultures, The University of Warwick; Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages, University of Oxford; Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation (OCCT)/The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH); Lincoln College, University of Oxford.