HERland AllStars Literature Festival
It is necessary to continue, over and over again, to confront female reality and perception with the usual images, to show what is, to illuminate what has so far remained in the dark. To draw a comprehensive picture of the world and to make visible what is hidden and concealed.
- Anne Goldmann †
July 4–6, 2025
Kuppelhalle
Admission free
We are delighted to welcome the HERland network to our programme in July. This self-organised network of women from the world of crime fiction is fighting for the visibility of women in the ‘grand narrative’ – especially in the field of suspense literature. Political, feminist, ungodly, against the right, anti-patriarchal and successful, they campaign for a strong, diverse and just (literary) world.
From 4 to 6 July, we invite you to the HERland AllStars Literature Festival, which offers readings, discussion panels and an intensive programme focused on feminist crime fiction. Renowned female crime writers and literary mediators from the network will be taking part - including Christine Lehmann, Monika Geier, Merle Kröger, Else Laudan, Gudrun Lerchbaum, Sophie Sumburane, Nikola Anne Mehlhorn, Uta-Maria Heim, Doris Hermanns, Katja Bohnet, Doris Gercke, Susanne Saygin and Kirsten Reimers.
At the centre of the festival is the conviction that crime fiction can go far beyond mere entertainment. For HERland, crime fiction does not simply mean murder investigation, but complex, powerful and exciting literature that tells of injustice and violence, focuses on conflicts and contradictions, deconstructs reactionary and discriminatory patterns, takes female realities of life seriously and challenges patriarchal norms. The aim is to reclaim the utopian in unadorned realism.
The network will demonstrate the polyphony of feminist, socio-politically committed crime fiction. In addition to readings, the focus is on dialogue: HERland promotes solidarity and networking among female authors, readers and mediators. Discussions about common challenges and goals not only strengthen individual creativity, but also the collective awareness of the change that literature can initiate.
More detailed information on the programme here.
The HERland network
In 2015, authors of high-calibre political crime fiction met for their first colloquium at Doris Gercke's home in Natendorf. A lively exchange about life, work and reading, biographical and writing experiences, novel backgrounds and references to reality, political and cultural concerns began. There was criticism of the still patriarchal literary canon, which is also hostile to crime and all too often depicts a majority society with its structural racism, classism and bourgeois cultural concepts. There was a consensus that women should be made more visible. There was collective conceptual and utopian work: who are we and what do we want? HERland was founded, a network in which critical female authors exchange and strengthen each other.
The network was named after Charlotte Perkins Gilman's utopian novel Herland (1915), the 100th anniversary of which was celebrated in the year it was founded. Even back then, the novel told of a democracy of women who reproduce parthenogenetically. The result is an ideal social order: free from war, conflict and domination.
In the ten years of its existence, HERland has organised numerous group readings and colloquia, actively participated in the "Publishers against the Right" initiative and established a scholarship named after founding member Anne Goldmann. In addition, a non-competitive exchange has developed between writers and literary mediators from the broad field of the tension literature genre, which deals creatively with social and systemic violence.
The literature festival is a project of silent green Film Feld Forschung gGmbH.
Funded by the Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt.
