Ursula Krechel and Mandy Wight

Nottingham, 23 November 2017

Ursula Krechel was born in 1947 in Trier, where she went to school. At the University of Cologne she studied German literature, drama, and history of art, and completed her studies in 1972 with a dissertation on Herbert Ihering. Whilst at university she wrote for the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger and Westdeutscher Rundfunk, as well as writing pieces for the Städtische Bühne Dortmund. In her book Shanghai fern von wo (2008) she describes the fate of 18,000 Jews who fled to the Shanghai Ghetto as one of the last few places to accept them without visas. Landgericht (2012), which won the German Bookprize, is based on the true story of a Jewish judge who returns in 1947 from exile in Havanna to a fragmented family. She lives in Berlin.

Mandy Wight graduated from the University of Cambridge with a degree in German and Spanish, and taught French, German and Spanish at schools and at the University of Sheffield. In 2010 she was awarded the Institute of Linguists' Diploma in Translation, and in 2014 won the ‘andotherstories’ translation competition for German at the Translate in the City Summer School. Her particular interest in contemporary women's writing is reflected in her translations, which include excerpts from Der lange Atem by Nina Jäckle, Das Verschwinden des Philip S. by Ulrike Edschmid, the poem 'Barfuss durch den Tempel' by Albert Ostermaier, and Landgericht by Ursula Krechel.

This event was sponsored by the Keith Spalding Bequest