Lutz Seiler
© Heike Steinweg
Lutz Seiler
Lutz Seiler was born in Gera, Thuringia, in 1963 and today lives in Wilhelmshorst near Berlin and in Stockholm. He underwent training as a mason and a carpenter and completed his studies in 1990. Since 1997, he has been the literary director and custodian of the Peter Huchel Museum. He was writer-in-residence at the Villa Aurora in Los Angeles and at the German Academy in Rome. His many prizes include the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, the Bremen Prize for Literature, the Fontane Prize, the Uwe Johnson Prize, and most recently the Georg Büchner Prize.
Lutz Seiler was born in Gera, Thuringia, in 1963 and today lives in Wilhelmshorst near Berlin and in Stockholm. He underwent training as a mason and a carpenter and completed his studies in 1990. Since 1997, he has been the literary director and custodian of the Peter Huchel Museum. He was writer-in-residence at the Villa Aurora in Los Angeles and at the German Academy in Rome. His many prizes include the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, the Bremen Prize for Literature, the Fontane Prize, the Uwe Johnson Prize, and most recently the Georg Büchner Prize.
Awards (selection)
Georg-Büchner-Preis 2023 (Germany)
Berliner Literaturpreis 2023 (Germany)
Bertolt-Brecht-Preis 2023 (Germany)
Literaturpreis der Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung 2023 (Germany)
Shortlisted for the Prix Femina étranger for Stern 111 2022 (France)
Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair for Stern 111 2020 (Germany)
Kakehashi Prize for Literature for Kruso 2020 (Japan)
German Book Prize for Kruso 2014 (Germany)
Uwe Johnson...
Berliner Literaturpreis 2023 (Germany)
Bertolt-Brecht-Preis 2023 (Germany)
Literaturpreis der Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung 2023 (Germany)
Shortlisted for the Prix Femina étranger for Stern 111 2022 (France)
Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair for Stern 111 2020 (Germany)
Kakehashi Prize for Literature for Kruso 2020 (Japan)
German Book Prize for Kruso 2014 (Germany)
Uwe Johnson...
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Georg-Büchner-Preis 2023 (Germany)
Berliner Literaturpreis 2023 (Germany)
Bertolt-Brecht-Preis 2023 (Germany)
Literaturpreis der Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung 2023 (Germany)
Shortlisted for the Prix Femina étranger for Stern 111 2022 (France)
Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair for Stern 111 2020 (Germany)
Kakehashi Prize for Literature for Kruso 2020 (Japan)
German Book Prize for Kruso 2014 (Germany)
Uwe Johnson Prize for Kruso 2014 (Germany)
Fellowship at Villa Massimo German Academy in Rome 2011
Fontane Prize for Die Zeitwaage 2010 (Germany)
Nomination for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize for Die Zeitwaage 2010 (Germany)
Ingeborg Bachmann Prize 2007
Bremen Literature Prize 2004
Fellowship at Villa Aurora, Los Angeles 2003
Anna Seghers Prize 2002
Meran Poetry Prize 2000
Kranichstein Literature Prize 1999
Berliner Literaturpreis 2023 (Germany)
Bertolt-Brecht-Preis 2023 (Germany)
Literaturpreis der Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung 2023 (Germany)
Shortlisted for the Prix Femina étranger for Stern 111 2022 (France)
Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair for Stern 111 2020 (Germany)
Kakehashi Prize for Literature for Kruso 2020 (Japan)
German Book Prize for Kruso 2014 (Germany)
Uwe Johnson Prize for Kruso 2014 (Germany)
Fellowship at Villa Massimo German Academy in Rome 2011
Fontane Prize for Die Zeitwaage 2010 (Germany)
Nomination for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize for Die Zeitwaage 2010 (Germany)
Ingeborg Bachmann Prize 2007
Bremen Literature Prize 2004
Fellowship at Villa Aurora, Los Angeles 2003
Anna Seghers Prize 2002
Meran Poetry Prize 2000
Kranichstein Literature Prize 1999
Praise
»As a novelist and as a poet, Lutz Seiler has found his own distinctive voice, melancholic, urgent, sincere, full of the wonderful echoes of a long literary tradition.« Jury of the Büchner Prize 2023
»Since the mid-1990s, Lutz Seiler has been moving through the genres, crossing borders, gaining new fascinating aspects from each genre, especially through literary interplay. ... His work, throughout which our time pulsates palpably, is characterised by a...
»Since the mid-1990s, Lutz Seiler has been moving through the genres, crossing borders, gaining new fascinating aspects from each genre, especially through literary interplay. ... His work, throughout which our time pulsates palpably, is characterised by a...
Read more
»As a novelist and as a poet, Lutz Seiler has found his own distinctive voice, melancholic, urgent, sincere, full of the wonderful echoes of a long literary tradition.« Jury of the Büchner Prize 2023
»Since the mid-1990s, Lutz Seiler has been moving through the genres, crossing borders, gaining new fascinating aspects from each genre, especially through literary interplay. ... His work, throughout which our time pulsates palpably, is characterised by a challenging of patterns of perception, by new beginnings on unfamiliar ground, observations of nature damaged by humans – the present as a network of tension formed by the remembered past.« Jury of the Berliner Literaturpreis 2023
»Since the mid-1990s, Lutz Seiler has been moving through the genres, crossing borders, gaining new fascinating aspects from each genre, especially through literary interplay. ... His work, throughout which our time pulsates palpably, is characterised by a challenging of patterns of perception, by new beginnings on unfamiliar ground, observations of nature damaged by humans – the present as a network of tension formed by the remembered past.« Jury of the Berliner Literaturpreis 2023
PUBLICATIONS
Latest first
Year of Publication: 2021
Lutz SeilerYear of Publication: 2021
script for blind giants
After publishing two novels, Lutz Seiler returns to the home port of poems. Back to the voices of childhood, to the Waldstadion, to the »bone park« and to the question of where our...
Rights sold to:
Sweden (Edda)
Year of Publication: 2020
Lutz SeilerYear of Publication: 2020
Star 111
»November 1989. The Berlin Wall has just fallen when the East German couple Inge und Walter, following a secret dream they’ve harboured all their lives, set out for life in the West....
Rights sold to:
UK & Commonwealth (And Other Stories), USA & Canada (NYRB), Arabic world rights (Kalima), France (Verdier), Italy (Utopia), Netherlands (Meridiaan), Denmark (Batzer), Sweden (Norstedts), Bulgaria (Black Flamingo), Lithuania (Hieronymus), Slovenia (Sodobnost), Greece (Patakis)
Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (DAV), German Entire Radio Readings (rbb & NDR), German Book Club (Büchergilde Gutenberg)
Year of Publication: 2014
Lutz SeilerYear of Publication: 2014
Kruso
After the accident, Edgar Bendler decides to step out of his own life. He becomes a dishwasher on Hiddensee, that legendary island which is said to lie outside of time and »beyond the...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (Scribe), Spanish world rights (Anagrama), Catalan rights (Club Editor), Russia (Text), France (Verdier), Italy (Del Vecchio), Denmark (Batzer & Co.), Sweden (Norstedts), Norway (Gyldendal Norsk), Japan (Hakusuisha), Poland (Jagiellonian UP), Hungary (Europa), Bulgaria (Atlantis), Romania (RAO), Lithuania (Kitos Knygos), Slovenia (Sodobnost), Turkey (Bence), Greece (Patakis), Macedonia (Goten), Armenia (Antares)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Chinese simplex rights (Horizon), Netherlands (Meridiaan / Dutch Media Group), Serbia (Laguna)
Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Hörbuch Hamburg), German Entire Radio Reading (NDR), German Book Club (Büchergilde Gutenberg + Club Bertelsmann)
Year of Publication: 2010
Lutz SeilerYear of Publication: 2010
in field latin
in field latin or in other words: to exist in a field of language, and at the same time explore a landscape’s legends, how they come to one’s ears, in walks, in whispers, in silence....
Rights sold to:
English world rights (Seagull), Italy (selection, Del Vecchio), Sweden (selection, Faethon)
Year of Publication: 2009
Lutz SeilerYear of Publication: 2009
The Time-Balance
Whether in the story of a play-acted shooting or in the everyday drama of a real-life separation – all the texts in The Time-Balance are about decisive turning-points, about the...
Rights sold to:
Catalan Rights (selection, Club Editor), Arabic world rights (Al'Asreya), France (Verdier), Italy (Del Vecchio Editore)
Year of Publication: 2008
Lutz SeilerYear of Publication: 2008
Turksib
Lutz Seiler first came to be known thanks to his two poetry collections, pech & blende (2000) and vierzig kilometer nacht (2003). For the Ingeborg-Bachmann-Prize in 2007 he offered up his first short story, Turksib, and was subsequently declared the winner.
Ilma Rakusa describes the text’s allure: »With poetic-grotesque...
Year of Publication: 2004
Lutz SeilerYear of Publication: 2004
In Case of Loss
»In Case of Loss gathers the best of Lutz Seiler’s non-fiction from last twenty-five years, revealing his essays to be different to, but on a par with, his fiction and poetry....
Rights sold to:
English world rights (And Other Stories), Italy (selection, Del Vecchio)
Year of Publication: 2003
Lutz SeilerYear of Publication: 2003
forty kilometres of night
Lutz Seiler‘s poems, created between 2000 and 2003, undertake a journey through forty kilometres of night, they lead out of the native landscape, destroyed by uranium mining, depicted in pech...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (And Other Stories)
Year of Publication: 2000
Lutz SeilerYear of Publication: 2000
Pitch & Glint
»On its original publication in 2000, Pitch & Glint was widely hailed as a landmark in German poetry. Rooted in Seiler’s childhood home, an East German village brutally...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (And Other Stories)
DISCOVER
News
Lutz Seiler: 60th Birthday on June 8, 2023
On June 8, 2023, Lutz Seiler celebrates his 60th birthday.News
Lutz Seiler awarded Bertolt-Brecht-Preis 2023
Since 1995, the City of Augsburg has been awarding the Bertolt-Brecht-Preis to writers who critically examine the present in their literary works.News