HERland AllStars Literature Festival
silent green presents
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.
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.
PROGRAMME
July 4
Doors: 6:30 pm
Start: 7 pm
HERland AllStars: A Long Night of Readings by Political Crime Fiction Writers
Reading by Sophie Sumburane, binge-reading of The Godless and the Successful, with discussions and a performative conclusion
At the start of the evening, crime writer Sophie Sumburane will read live from her as-yet-unpublished text, with which she is currently competing in the 2025 Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis in Klagenfurt. This is followed by the self-introduction of HERland, moderated by Ariadne publisher Else Laudan, featuring readings by all present HERland authors from their current crime novels: Christine Lehmann reads Alles nicht echt, Gudrun Lerchbaum reads Niemand hat es kommen sehen, Uta-Maria Heim reads Tanz oder stirb, and also Nikola Anne Mehlhorn (Widerstund), Monika Geier (Antoniusfeuer), Susanne Saygin (Crash) and Katja Bohnet will read.
To conclude, Merle Kröger, Rubaica Jaliwala and Ayla Güney perform a trilingual reading of the audio piece Was fehlt – Eksik Olan Ne – What’s Missing, currently featured at the 13th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, live in German, English, and Turkish. This contribution explores global events, truth and what remains unsaid and at the same time builds a bridge to the themes of the following evening.
Sign up for free here for the first day.
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July 5
Doors: 6:30 pm
Start: 7 pm
A Better World Is Possible: Activism as a Wellness Program
Short reading by Susanne Kaiser from her book Riot Girl, followed by an open panel discussion with HERland AllStars
For many feminists today, world events feel more like horror than crime fiction: reactionary ultramasculine forces are waging inhumane wars – against people, against ideas. They are dismantling the fragile progress made toward interpreting the world in less colonial and patriarchal ways. The tone is becoming increasingly aggressive. Hate propaganda and violence are on the rise, social and cultural structures are crumbling, and both societies and ecosystems are on the brink of collapse.
What can we do in the face of hopelessness, fragmentation, paralysis, and depression?
The title of this evening suggests one possible direction: taking action – politically, civically, through storytelling. Storytelling as resistance, as connection, as a form of self-care. With sharp analyses, a critical historical lens, and a dash of utopia, we’ll explore through discussion what role storytelling can play in this moment.
We ask:
What kinds of stories do we need right now?
How can we write against the far right?
What role does genre fiction play – historically, today, politically? What can it actually do?
Can literature push back against fear and hate?
And we ask the writers and readers:
How can writing and reading counter isolation and help us build kinships—connections that sustain, empower, and spark?
Discussion impulses include topics such as:
Where to put the fascists? Storytelling as feminist labor
The patriarchy: a perpetrator profile
Popular form meets political-emancipatory intent – with a commitment to excellence: What can that achieve?
How much realism? Genre at the edge of documentary
Decolonizing crime fiction – opening windows to the world
Crossing borders – still? Again? Crime or not crime: what really matters now?
Sign up for free here for the second day.
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July 6
Start: 11 am
HERland Matinée for Writers, Readers, and Activists
On the final day of the festival, the matinée will focus on themes such as civil society engagement, storytelling as resistance, political reading culture, and solidarity-based alliances.
Recently, The Guardian published an article by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor that exposes the global trajectory of the far right as a form of “end-times fascism”: technocapitalist fantasies of escape combined with authoritarian nationalism and a ruthless acceptance of environmental destruction and mass suffering (German translation in issue 6–25 of Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik). Klein and Taylor propose a powerful counter-narrative: “We respond to their apocalyptic story with a much better one – a story about how we can survive the hard times ahead without leaving anyone behind. […] A story not about the end of the world, but about better times; not about isolation and domination, but about solidarity and belonging.”
If we take this as our project – how do we begin? What can crime fiction contribute to this? And: Let’s make kin – solidarity instead of defeatism.
Sign up for free here for the third day.
At every event, there is a specially curated book table by HERland, showcasing, celebrating, and making accessible the rich diversity of provocative feminist crime and suspense literature.
July 4–6, 2025
Kuppelhalle, lawn
Admission free
The HERland network
In 2015, female 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 female 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.