from 1,000 Coils of Fear

Olivia Wenzel, who was born in Weimar, Germany, and lives in Berlin, is the author of the novel 1000 Serpentinen Angst (S. Fischer Verlag, 2020), which has been translated into Dutch, Norwegian, and Danish. A theatrical adaptation premiered at the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin this summer, and theaters in Osnabrück, Hannover, and Meiningen will follow with their own this fall. Several of Wenzel’s dramatic works, including Mais in Deutschland und anderen Galaxien and Jiggy Porsche taucht ab, have been staged in Munich at the Münchner Kammerspiele, in Hamburg at the Thalia Theater, and in Berlin at the Deutsches Theater and the Ballhaus Naunynstrasse. Wenzel also works as a performer, collaborating with multidisciplinary theatre collectives such as vorschlag:hammer and Shatter. In 2022 she will lead a series of multidisciplinary workshops for young adults of color at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. (updated 10/2021)

Priscilla Layne is the author of White Rebels in Black: German Appropriation of Black Popular Culture (University of Michigan Press, 2018). She has also published essays on Turkish German culture, translation, punk, and film. Layne is associate professor of German and adjunct associate professor of African Diaspora Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (updated 10/2021)