DEBÜTANT*INNENBALL: Anja Gmeinwieser / Martin Piekar / Lara Rüter - 40. Freiburger Literaturgespräch: Drei Debüts im Gespräch
Anja Gmeinwieser: We Queens
Moderation: Leo Boquoi
Three books, three songs, one evening! Three magnificent debuts that pose significant questions: What is a human, what is an animal? Who are my neighbors? What language do we speak?
Anja Gmeinwieser opens the series with her road novel "We Queens" (Berlin Verlag, 2026) and a cell phone that "flies off from the first peak" of the Alps with an exaggerated gesture. Fleeing from her all too normal life, the narrator encounters Anna, who is transporting pregnant cows to Turkey. A spontaneous "I’ll go with you" turns into a connection through international bad English and a sometimes hallucinating phone translator, a love affair between highways. But as it gets hotter in the transporter, the animals fall ill, and Anna’s boss doesn’t pay, it also becomes a hellish trip – to the EU’s external border, where dreams and cows wash ashore.
"These two women are not just characters in a novel, they represent solidarity, hope, rebellion," writes author Mareike Fallwickl about Gmeinwieser’s debut, which flips the classic Western plot of cattle drives on its head and intertwines it with questions of motherhood, work, and identity.
Martin Piekar: On the Felling of a Family Tree
Moderation: Sonja Karadza
When Martin Piekar read excerpts from his debut novel "On the Felling of a Family Tree" (Rowohlt, 2026) at the Bachmann reading contest 2023, he impressed with precise, poetic language – and a loud, long scream: the scream of a young man's overwhelm as he grows up without a father in a cramped two-room apartment with his mother and cares for her until her death following a cancer diagnosis.
The young man's name is Marcin. In the 1980s, his mother fled with him from Poland to Germany, worked as a caregiver, and struggled with addiction. While Marcin searches for his place amidst video games, nu metal, and poetry, the two live in a closeness between care and abysses. With the mother’s illness, the family history reveals itself in all its gravity: from memories, anecdotes, and painful realizations, a portrait of a German-Polish family emerges, where war, migration, and social exclusion continue to resonate in the present.
Lara Rüter: Monkey Love
Moderation: Katharina Knüppel
At the bulletin board, Lara Rüter read the notice: "Help Wanted in Primate Research." The poet spent five years in the monkey house of the Leipzig Zoo and grounds her reflections on closeness, loss, longing, and boundaries there. Her essay "Monkey Love" (Hanser, 2026) measures the gap between humans and their closest relatives, reflecting the peculiar social behavior of the animals in personal experiences of the author: an abortion, in which preparation she feels the political pressure of what women are supposed to want. The search for her biological father and her relationship with her "cuckoo father." What emerged is a highly literary, permeable text that connects autobiographical and inventive storytelling with quotes from Roland Barthes, Emily Dickinson, and Martina Hefter, scientific inquiries, and scenes in the enclosure.
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Photos: Anja Gmeinwieser © Linda Sier, Martin Piekar © Charlotte Werndt, Lara Rüter © Michael Bader
Sponsors: Cultural Office of the City of Freiburg, Ministry of Science, Research, and the Arts of Baden-Württemberg, Sparkasse Freiburg-Nördlicher Breisgau, Guzzoni-Federer Foundation, Deutsche Pfandbriefbank
Cooperation Partners: Theater im Marienbad, Bookstore jos fritz
Cultural Partner: SWR Culture
Date: 6.11.2026, 18–20:00
Location: Theater im Marienbad, Marienstraße 4
Admission: 11/7 Euro / Combination ticket (including comics reading with Mia Oberländer) with drink: 18/12 Euro
Literature Discussion
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