Fluid Dreamscapes: Lin Hierse in Conversation with Elizabeth Sun and Deniz Göktürk

Sponsor(s): UC Berkeley Department of German, Goethe-Institut San Francisco, German Historical Institute Washington | Pacific Office Berkeley, Institute of European Studies, German Consulate General San Francisco

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Lin Hierse holds an M.A. in Asian Studies and Urban Geography from the Humboldt University of Berlin. She currently works as a journalist and author in Germany, and has been an editor at die tageszeitung (taz) since 2019, where she wrote the column poetical correctness from 2020 to 2023. Her first novel, Wovon wir träumen [What we dream about], was published by Piper in 2022. In elegant and moving narration, the auto-fictional novel offers glimpses and sound bites from the protagonist’s life in Shanghai and Berlin, weaving in fragments from her mother and grandmother’s lives during China’s Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. Transitions between places in this far-flung family story follow the logic of dreams. Hierse has emerged as a unique voice in the growing body of Asian German literature, echoing the beautiful lyricism and coming-of-age reckonings of Ocean Vuong and Jenny Zhang. Most recently, Hierse published the short story “KTV Girl” in the anthology Das Wetter Buch für Text und Musik [The weather book for text & music] (2023, Kiepenheuer & Witsch). 

Elizabeth Sun is a PhD student in the Department of German at UC Berkeley. She holds degrees in Comparative Literature and Transcultural Studies from Columbia University and Ruprecht-Karls Universität Heidelberg. Elizabeth is currently a managing editor of TRANSIT: A Journal of Travel, Migration, and Multiculturalism in the German-speaking World, and is a translator of contemporary German language literature.

Deniz Göktürk is Professor of German at the University of California, Berkeley

The discussion will be conducted in English with readings in German.

If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) or information about campus mobility access features in order to fully participate in this event, please contact Ray Savord at rsavord@berkeley.edu or (510) 642-4555 with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days before the event.