What we’re about
The Reader Berlin is a platform for writers of all nationalities, offering community, networking and author services.
Since 2011, we’ve been hosting creative writing workshops, seminars, literary events, and author get-togethers. Our tutors are award-winning authors and publishing professionals who offer expert insight, advice and encouragement to emerging writers. In the past few years, we’ve worked with hundreds of participants from all over the world, many of whom have gone on to publish work of their own. If you’ve never written a story before, come and have a go. If writing is everything to you, then we’d very much like to meet you too. We take it – but not ourselves – seriously.
Don't forget - to reserve a place on one of our workshops, you need to email hello@thereaderberlin.com, RSVPing on Meet Up is not enough!
Berlin is our home and we’re very much part of the international community of writers here. Writing can be joyous but it is solitary; we aim to bring writers together, to share contacts and build bridges to the publishing industry. Alongside readings and our programme of courses, we offer one-to-one mentoring, manuscript assessment, and editing services. Our tutors have taught in MFA programmes, publish books, write for international publications, and contribute to journals and magazines; their guidance and experience is invaluable.
We work with all kinds of writers – from those just starting out to published authors. Our alumni have won awards, started their own magazines, been published in print and online, gone on to undertake Creative Writing MAs and MFAs, and won publishing deals with major publishing houses.
What started life as a single workshop in the cellar of a Kreuzberg bookshop has evolved to encompass The Berlin Writing Prize, Writing Retreats on the Pelion peninsula in Greece, a series of print anthologies and a writers’ festival. At the heart of what we do is the belief that writers can and should help one another, and that with one another’s support we can become better writers.
Check out the testimonials from our participants here.
Upcoming events (3)
See all- BOOK(S) LAUNCH: DISPERSALS by Jessica Lee and UTTER, EARTH by Isaac YuenLobe Block / terrassenhaus, Berlin, BE
## Join us and the Embassy of Canada in Germany as we host the Berlin book launch of TWO Nature Writing Books: Dispersals by Jessica Lee and Utter, Earth by Isaac Yuen.
In Dispersals: on Plants, Borders, and Belonging, prize-winning memoirist and nature writer, Jessica Lee turns to the lives of plants entangled in our human world to explore belonging, displacement, identity, and the truths of our shared future.
Isaac Yuen’s Utter, Earth, Advice on Living in a More-than-Human World is a light, literary take on an animal book for grown-ups, a tongue-in-cheek self-help column with lessons drawn from nature, a sort of hitchhiker’s guide to the more-than-human world. It is a celebration, through wordplay and earthplay, of our planet’s riotous wonders.
On May 23rd Jessica and Isaac will be in conversation about their explorations of flora, fauna and their journeys to findings that remind us how inextricably bound to nature we are.
The event will take place at Lobe Block and is co-sponsored by the Embassy of Canada in Germany. There will be readings and discussions followed by an audience Q&A and book signing.
Books will be available for sale at the event, courtesy of the lovely Curious Fox!Jessica J. Lee is a British-Canadian-Taiwanese author, environmental historian, and winner of the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature, the Banff Mountain Book Award, and the RBC Taylor Prize Emerging Writer Award. She is the author of nature writing books Turning, Two Trees Make a Forest, and Dispersals, the children’s book A Garden Called Home, and co-editor of the essay collection Dog Hearted. She has a PhD in Environmental History and Aesthetics and is the founding editor of The Willowherb Review. She teaches creative writing at the University of Cambridge and lives in Berlin.
A first-generation Hong Kong-Canadian writer, Isaac Yuen pens essays and short fiction that explores themes around nature, culture, and identity. He is the co-author of the award-winning Atlas der ungewöhnlichen Klänge: Eine Reise zu den akustischen Wunderdern unserer Erde with nature writer Michaela Vieser, and holds a Master’s in Environmental Education and Communication. A 2019 writer-in-residence at the Jan Michalski Foundation for Literature in Montricher, Switzerland, Isaac is currently a Fiction Meets Science Fellow at the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg (HWK) Institute of Advanced Studies in Delmenhorst, Germany. - Get Writing! A Summer Creative Writing WorkshopLettrétage, Berlin, BE€140.00
***RSVP-ing to this event does not secure your spot!***
To register your spot go to:
https://www.thereaderberlin.com/weekend-workshop/get-writing-a-summer-creative-writing-workshop/Get Writing! Summer Creative Writing Workshop
Have you been wondering about how to put your idea for a story on to the page? Or do you want to breathe new life into those short stories that have been languishing at the bottom of a drawer? Many of us have a creative writing project or idea on the go – but need the tools to bring them over the finish line.
So let’s meet in June for a weekend workshop!
This two-day workshop invites you to create new ideas across a range of writing forms through visual, auditory, and written prompts, asking you to explore character, tone, point of view, story arrangement, settings, and conflict.
Through pre-workshop reading, lively in-group discussion, and tailored creative writing exercises, this course aims to be productive; a creative experience to catalyze both beginner and seasoned writers in new imaginative directions. Writers will explore and discuss craft and creative ideas during the first day, with more in-depth writing occurring on day two. Writing will take place in short bursts throughout and, if the weather is sunny, we’ll head to the park for a writing exercise too. Everyone will leave with story ideas and inspiration for many more.
Pre-workshop writing, including passages and several prompts, will be emailed one week prior, whereas writing will be conceived of on the weekend.
This course is open to all levels of writers, across all formats, and is particularly suited to new writers, anyone looking to generate new ideas, and those unsure or shy about calling themselves ‘writer’ just yet. Writers of colour, working class, LGBTQ+, disability, and anyone who believes their stories aren’t being heard are joyfully invited.DIVYA GHELANI was born in Gujarat and grew up in Loughborough, Leicestershire. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and an MPhil in Literary Studies from the University of Hong Kong. She has published stories and articles in Wasafiri Magazine, Comma Press, BBC Radio 4, Litro Magazine, and more. Divya has led creative writing workshops for The Reader Berlin, Writing East Midlands, The Word Factory, Comma Press, among others.
Divya is working on her first novel, Night School. It was shortlisted for PRH WriteNow, longlisted for the Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers’ Award, longlisted for The Bath Novel Award, twice longlisted for the SI Leeds Literary Prize, and received an honorary mention in the Harry Bowling Prize for New Writing. The opening of Night School was selected for Issue 1 of The Good Journal. She lives in Berlin.
***RSVP-ing to this event does not secure your spot!***
To register your spot go to: https://www.thereaderberlin.com/weekend-workshop/get-writing-a-summer-creative-writing-workshop/