As every year, experienced moderators will introduce the readings and lead the conversations.
Mustafa Al-Slaiman is a literary translator and conference interpreter for Arabic and German. He also works as an editor with KALIMA Abu Dhabi and is a member of the Sheik Zayed Book Award Committee. He lives in Berlin.
Lukas Bärfuss – see authors
Thorsten Dönges studied German literature and history in Bamberg. Since 2000, he has worked at the Literary Colloquium Berlin, where he is responsible for the German-language literature program and leads prose writing workshops. He first discovered and became an admirer of the Leukerbad Literary Festival in 2006, when he was moderator of the translation colloquium.
Irene Grüter was born in 1979 and studied German literature and history in Bern and Berlin. She then worked as a freelance cultural journalist in various media. Since 2007, she has worked as a moderator and editor at Radio SRF2 Kultur in Basel.
Meret Matter studied acting in Bern and works as a freelance theater director. Since the early 1990s, she has led the Gruppe Club 111 with Grazia Pergoletti and Renate Wünsch. She has staged productions at the Lucerne Theater, the Schauspielhaus Zürich, the Staatsschuaspiel Hannover, and the Freiburg Theater. She continues to work in the freelance theater scene and performs as a singer and narrator.
Christian Ruzicska was born in 1970 and studied German literature and philosophy at the Rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-University in Bonn. He is a co-founder of Tropen Press and in 2011, he founded the Secession Literature Press.
Karl Rühmann – see authors
Gesa Schneider has served as the director of the Zurich Literature House since 2013. From 2015 to 2018, she was also a co-director of the Strauhof Museum. After earning her doctorate with a thesis on Kafka and photography, she worked as project leader at Heller Enterprises from 2006 to 2013 and from 2008 to 2013 she taught as a lecturer in image theory at the F+F in Zurich.
Raphael Urweider, born in 1974, is a poetry, playwright, translator, and musician. He has published several volumes of poetry and written plays with Samuel Schwarz, Pedro Lenz, and Matto Kämpf, among others. His published titles include Wildern (Poaching, 2018), Alle deine Namen. Gedichte von der Liebe und der Liederlichkeit (All Your Names: Poems of Love and Lewdness, 2008), and Lichter in Menlo Park (Lights in Menlo Park, 2000).
Barbara Wahlster works in Berlin as a journalist, critic, and author. Among other positions, she served as literary editor in chief at Deutschlandradio Kultur (now Deutschlandfunk Kultur). She has translated non-fiction books from French into German and often worked abroad, most recently as a Max-Kade guest professor at Vanderbilt University in the USA. She has worked as a moderator for the International Festival Berlin since early 2022.
Stefan Weidner – see authors
Nora Zukker is a journalist and moderator. After several years working with Radio SRF, she now works as a literary editor for the Tages-Anzeiger. In the last few years, she has also become an established moderator for readings and podium discussions covering the intersection between culture and society.
Stefan Zweifel works as a freelance writer and curator in Zurich. He has translated de Sade, Rousseau, and Proust and was the director of the SRF Literaturclub until 2014. Most recently, he co-produced the show Der erschöpfte Mann (The Exhausted Man) with Juri Schneider in the Landesmuseum and he serves as Artistic Director of the Eventi Litterari Monte Verità.
