Sylvie Schenk
Germany/France
The writer Sylvie Schenk was born in 1944 in the French Alps. She studied Latin, Greek, and French in Lyon, worked as a freelance writer for educational radio and educational publishers. She still publishes poems (in French) as well as novels and short stories (in German). Schenk has lived in Germany since 1966.
Sylvie Schenk’s eleventh novel Maman was shortlisted for the 2023 German Book Prize. In it, the author explores her family history and searches for her mother’s origins, whose own mother died in childbirth. Mixing research and fiction, the novel retraces not only the author’s origins but also the shame that stigmatizes of children born out of wedlock. It draws an arc from the poverty of workers in the First World War to the post-War bourgeoisie. “Fragmentary like memory, skeptical of its own resentment, doubtful of its role in the family drama and at the writing desk, precise, intelligent, and witty, hard and yet tender,” Daniela Strigl writes of the book in the FAZ.
Together with the jazz musician Heribert Leuchter, Sylvie Schenk will present her novel Maman in Leukerbad as a “text-concert.”
Maman. Novel. Hanser 2023
Roman d’amour. Novel. Hanser 2021
Eine gewöhnliche Familie. Novel. Hanser 2018
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