We congratulate May Mergenthaler, Associate Professor in the department, who has been accepted as fellow of the Akademie für Lyrikkritik at the Haus für Poesie in Berlin for the first 6 months of 2021. Her fellowship with the Academy for the Critique of the Lyric will last until July 31 of this year and focus on European authors and multilingualism.

As a fellow, she will take part in five events, the first two remotely, and the last three will hopefully take place live in Berlin. 

On February 19, 2021, May will present her review of Annie Freud’s most recent poetry collection, Hiddensee (Picador, Jan. 2021). Mergenthaler’s 8-minute video presentation on Hiddensee will join the reviews of recent German and English-language poetry collections by eight other competitively selected fellows, many of whom are published poets themselves. This virtual event, which will be conducted in German, can be accessed on February 19, 2021, at 1:30 p.m. EST, via this link - https://www.haus-fuer-poesie.org/de/literaturwerkstatt-berlin/veranstaltungen/alle_veranstaltungen/akademie-fuer-lyrikkritik on Facebook, Youtube, and the #kanalfuerpoesie. It will also be published online at a later date.

The House for Poetry, founded in 1991, is Germany’s most prestigious institution for the promotion and support of “all areas of literature, but especially poetry, both as the written word and in conjunction with other art forms and media” (https://www.haus-fuer-poesie.org/en/literaturwerkstatt-berlin/about-us/who-we-are/).