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
Binge-reading with conversation & a concluding trilingual performance
After an introduction of the feminist literary project HERland, numerous (short) readings by the present authors follow: Christine Lehmann reads Alles nicht echt, Gudrun Lerchbaum reads Niemand hat es kommen sehen, Uta-Maria Heim liest Tanz oder stirb, and also Sophie Sumburane (Tote Winkel), Nikola Anne Mehlhorn (Widerstund), Monika Geier (Antoniusfeuer), and Susanne Saygin (Crash) read – all interwoven with spontaneous ping-pong conversations between the individual contributions.
The event concludes with a trilingual performative reading of Merle Kröger’s Was fehlt – Eksik Olan Ne – What’s Missing, together with Rubaica Jaliwala and Ayla Güney – in German, English, and Turkish. This approximately 20-minute finale opens up the space towards global events, truth and the telling, of the unsaid, while building a thematic bridge to 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.
Sign up for free here for the third day.
July 4–6, 2025
Kuppelhalle, lawn
Admission free
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.