Özlem Özgül Dündar

© Dincer Gücyeter

Özlem Özgül Dündar was born in Solingen in 1983 and lives in Leipzig and Solingen. After gaining a degree in Literature and Philosophy in Wuppertal she studied at the German Literature Institute in Leipzig. She writes poetry, plays and essays and also works as a translator. Dündar performs with her collectives Ministerium für Mitgefühl (Ministry of Empathy) and kollektiv flexen (collective flexing). Her stage/radio play “türken, feuer” was named radio play of the year in 2020. She was co-editor of the anthology „Flexen – Flâneusen* schreiben Städte“ (Verbrecher Verlag, 2019). Her poems published in the collection „gedanken zerren“ (ELIF Verlag, 2018) form shaped structures in which punctuation is consistently shunned and which often leave the reader literally and metaphorically breathless. As Andreas Richartz wrote about the collection for fixpoetry, “What Dündar manages here, in both form and content, is a way of speaking against the self-evident nature of things that leads into a multiplicity of themes.”

Publications (Selection):
gedanken zerren. ELIF Verlag, 2018.

Recognition (Selection):
2019: Alfred Müller Felsenburg Literature Prize
2018: Kelag Prize
2015: Wolfgang Weyrauch Promotion Prize
2015: Retzhofer Drama Prize

Festival Content