Anna Seghers Prize 2026

Born in 1975 near Hamburg and living in Berlin, award winner Sonja M. Schultz published her highly acclaimed debut novel, *Hundesohn*, in 2019. Her second novel, *Mauerpogo*, published by Aufbau Verlag in 2025, centers on young rebels living in a country that no longer exists—the GDR.

It is about the self-assertion of young people “who do not want to fit into a society’s normative value system,” says juror Alexander Graeff. In Schultz’s prose, the poetic does not stand in opposition to the political. “Rather, it combines a stance with a very physical, poetic style of writing.”

Chilean author and philosophy lecturer Daniela Catrileo was born in 1987 and grew up bilingual (Spanish and Mapundungun). Her short stories, novels, and essays focus on forms of racially and sexistly motivated violence. In the jury’s statement explaining the award, juror Andrea Garcés emphasizes that Catrileo draws on all literary forms and genres as well as the oral expressions of Mapuche culture, and furthermore on music, the visual arts, and performance. In doing so, she draws attention to the existence of “wounded languages” and brings exiled memory to life. The Chilean author has created a body of work that is connected to that of Seghers in that it creates a “fundamental language” through which the present of Chile and Latin America becomes legible in a new way.

The Anna Seghers Prize, endowed with 25,000 euros, is awarded in equal parts to the two authors. It is presented annually by the Anna Seghers Foundation to young writers who, in the spirit of Anna Seghers, build a bridge between the literary worlds of the German-speaking world and Latin America and advocate for a more just world through their works. Each year, the selection is made by prominent figures from the literary world commissioned by the foundation.

The Prize Winners

Daniela Catrileo, born in 1987 in Santiago, Chile, is a writer, artist, activist, and philosophy lecturer. She studied education and philosophy at the Universidad Metropolitana de las Ciencias de la Educación. She organizes literary workshops, is an active member of the Mapuche collective “Rangiñtulewfü,” and received a grant from the Chilean Ministry of Culture, Arts, and Heritage in 2012, 2016, and 2020. Catrileo is committed to the rights of Chile’s indigenous population. As a writer, Catrileo has primarily made a name for herself through her poetry. The title of her first poetry collection, “Río Herido” (2016), derives from her own surname: “Catrileo” is a Hispanicized form of the Mapuche word “katrü lewfü,” which means “wounded river.” Her most recent publication, “Chilco,” is a fable about love, life, and friendship in a world in decline.

Sonja M. Schultz, born in 1975, grew up in Schleswig-Holstein and studied theater studies and art history in Berlin. She earned her doctorate in 2012 with a book on cinema, the Holocaust, and German memory culture (National Socialism in Film: From Triumph of the Will to Inglourious Basterds). She works as a (film) journalist, in film studies and political education, and occasionally works on documentary and short film projects as well as writing elsewhere; she also performs spoken word and songs on alternative stages from time to time. Her debut novel, “Hundesohn,” was published by Kampa Verlag in 2019. In 2025, “Mauerpogo” was published by Aufbau Verlag, a project supported by the Berlin Senate’s literature grant.

The Jurors

Andrea Garcés, born in 1987 in Cali, Colombia, completed a bachelor’s and master’s degree in General and Comparative Literature at the Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá, Colombia) and the Freie Universität Berlin, and earned her doctorate in the literatures of the American deserts. In addition to her work as a scholar, she works as an editor and translator for the Gegensatz-Translation-Collective and Oreri—Iniziativa Editoriale and is a member of the literary translation collective artiCHOKE.

Alexander Graeff, born in 1976 in Bad Kreuznach, is a German writer and philosopher. He lives and works as a lecturer, curator, and literary educator in Berlin and Greifswald. Graeff writes both philosophical and fictional texts. He is a co-founder of PEN Berlin.

• Date: Saturday, 6 June 2026
• Time: 7.00 pm
• Venue: Academy of Arts on Pariser Platz, Plenary Hall