Jury of 2013

Egon Ammann
(Publisher)
Egon Ammann was born 1941. After his schooling he completed an apprenticeship as a publisher and attended university in Bern and Fribourg. He went on to work as an editor for numerous German and foreign-language publishing houses abroad. In 1981, he and Marie-Luise Flammersfeld co-founded the Ammann Verlag in Zurich. After the publishing house closed in 2011, he moved to Berlin, where he continues to publish works by various authors, among them Fernando Pessoa.

Hans Christoph Buch
(Writer)
Hans Christoph Buch was born in 1944. A novelist, reporter and essayist, he studied German and Slavic language and literature at the University of Bonn and the FU Berlin. In 1972, he completed his doctorate in literature under Walter Höllerer at the Technische Universität Berlin. In the 1970s, he worked for the Rowohlt Verlag, for which he edited the magazine “Literaturmagazin”. Later, he lectured at universities in the US, Chile and Cuba and traveled widely in North and South America, Africa and Asia, with extended stays in China. Buch developed a special relationship with the Caribbean region in the 1980s, especially with Haiti, where many of his novels are set. In the 1990s, he was a prominent reporter from war zones and crisis-hit regions.

Kersten Knipp
(Cultural Journalist/ Literary Critic)
Kersten Knipp was born in 1966. A doctor of Romance languages and literature, he studied Portuguese, French and English philology in Cologne, Toulouse and Fortaleza, Brazil. He lives in Cologne, where he works as a freelance journalist, covering developments in Spain, Portugal and Latin America. Following the 9/11 attacks on New York, he resolved to learn Arabic and has since also written extensively about the culture and literature of the Arab World. He writes regularly about culture and politics in the Middle East for a range of broadcasters and publications, including Deutschlandfunk, WDR, FAZ, NZZ and “Freitag“. He is currently writing a cultural history of Brazil and a book about secular culture in the Arab World.

Marie Luise Knott
(Critic / Translator)
Marie Luise Knott, born in 1953, was a longtime lector at a publishing house (1978 – 1986) and founder and director of the German-language edition of Le Monde Diplomatique (1995-2006). Since 2006, she has been living and working in Berlin as a freelance writer, journalist and translator. She writes about contemporary art and literature for a number of publications, including Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Deutschlandfunk, Perlentaucher and Tagesspiegel. She is a member of the board of the Deutscher Übersetzerfonds and was curator of the exhibition “Hannah Arendt – Von den Dichtern erwarten wir Wahrheit” (2006, along with Barbara Hahn). Her most recent publication was: “Verlernen. Denkwege bei Hannah Arendt”, Berlin 2011.

Claudia Kramatschek
(Literary Critic / Arts Journalist)
Claudia Kramatschek, born in 1966, studied German and Italian Language and Literature. From 1993-1997 she was an editor with the magazine KUNST+UNTERRICHT, published by Friedrich Verlag. Since 1997, she has been working as a freelance literary critic, feature writer, curator and arts journalist. She writes for public broadcasters (including Deutschlandradio Kultur/Deutschlandfunk, WDR, SWR), Neue Zürcher Zeitung and the Islam portal quantara.de. The main focus of her work is on the Indian subcontinent and the Maghreb. She regularly moderates for the LCB, the Literaturwerkstatt Berlin and the Frankfurt Book Fair. She lives and works in Berlin.

Ricarda Otte
(Editor, Culture & Arts Department, Deutsche Welle Berlin)
Ricarda Otte was born in 1982. She studied Spanish philology, general and comparative literature sciences and modern history at the Freie Universität Berlin and in Madrid. In her doctorate, she examined the literary orchestration of body language in Clarín’s “La Regenta“. During her studies she also worked as a journalist and completed an internship with Deutschen Welle from 2008 to 2010, which took her to Bonn, Brussels, Barranquilla and Berlin. Since 2010, she has been working as an editor and writer for the culture and arts department of Deutschen Welle in Berlin and has shot reports for the weekly television magazine “KULTUR.21“ in various countries, including Brazil, Colombia and Morocco.

Ilma Rakusa
(Writer/ Translator/ Journalist)
llma Rakusa, born in 1946, is a literary scientist, writer and translator. She studied Slavic Studies and Romance Studies in Zurich, Paris and Leningrad. From1971 to 1977, she served as assistant at the Slavic Seminar of the University of Zurich, where she has been an assisstant lecturer since 1977. She has translated from French, Russian, Serbo-Croat and Hungarian and also works as a journalist (Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Die Zeit). Today, she lives and works as a freelance writer in Zurich. She has received numerous awards for her work, including the Leipziger Buchpreis zur Europäischen Verständigung (1998), the Adelbert-von Chamisso-Preis (2003) and the Schweizer Buchpreis (2009). She is a member of the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung.