Authors in Conversation III: Esther Dischereit and Elizabeth Bradfield
In cooperation with the Goethe-Institut Boston 
12-1:30 pm Eastern Time (US)
Zoom Webinar
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About the Event
Berlin-based author Esther Dischereit, regarded as a leading figure of second-generation German Jewish literature, and Elizabeth Bradfield, a naturalist and writer whose work appeared in THE NEW YORKER, talk about what it means to be a poet in today’s challenging world. Which role can and should literature play while our societies are facing seemingly insurmountable challenges?
About the Speakers
Esther Dischereit is a writer of novels, short stories, essays, poetry and plays for radio and the stage. Based in Berlin, Dischereit is regarded a leading figure of second-generation German Jewish literature after the Holocaust. Her prose works include Joëmis Tisch – Eine jüdische Geschichte (1988) (English title: Joëmi’s Table), Übungen jüdisch zu sein (1996) (English title: Lessons in Being Jewish), and Blumen für Otello. Über die Verbrechen von Jena (2014) (Flowers for Otello: On the Crimes that Came Out of Jena, exp. in English 2021) about a series of racially motivated murders and bomb attacks committed by a terrorist organization called the National Socialist Underground (NSU) during 1998-2011. In 2020 she published Sometimes a Single Leaf, a book of German poetry with English translations by Iain Galbraith, and a collection of essays entitled Mama darf ich das Deutschlandlied singen (Mama, May I Sing the German National Anthem).
Find more information about Esther Dischereit on her website and follow her on Facebook. Read the poem Lamentations from her upcoming book Flowers for Otello. On the Crimes which came out of Jena (poetry and drama, translated by Iain Galbraith, will be published in 2021 by Seagull Books, Calcutta).
Photo credit: Bettina Straub
Elizabeth Bradfield is the author of the Once Removed, Approaching Ice, Interpretive Work and Toward Antarctica. Theorem, a collaboration with artist Antonia Contro, is forthcoming this fall. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Kenyon Review, and her honors include the Audre Lorde Prize and a Stegner Fellowship. Founder and editor-in-chief of Broadsided Press, she works as a naturalist/guide and teaches creative writing at Brandeis University.
Find more information about Elizabeth Bradfield on her website and read her poem Touchy in The Atlantic.