Birgit Weyhe and Katy Derbyshire
Online, 22 June 2022
In this author-translator discussion in the 'Encounters' series, comic artist Birgit Weyhe and translator Katy Derbyshire focus on the comic novel Madgermanes, published in 2016, and in English translation in 2021. Through text and evocative images, the book tells the story of Mozambicans who came to work in East Germany in the late 1970s and lost their residency status after the fall of the Wall.
Since graduating from art school (HAW), Birgit Weyhe has worked as a comic artist in Hamburg. Her graphic novels have been nominated for several prizes in Germany, France and Japan, and her album Madgermanes was awarded the Bertholt Leibinger Stiftung Comic Book Prize in 2015, and the Max-und-Moritz-Preis for best German-language comic in 2016. In 2022 she was awarded the Lessing Scholarship of the City of Hamburg.
Katy Derbyshire is a London-born translator and publisher. Based in Berlin for many years, she translates work by contemporary German writers including Sandra Hoffmann, Clemens Meyer and Olga Grjasnowa. She also teaches literary translation and heads the V&Q Books imprint.
This Encounter is sponsored by the Keith Spalding Trust