How I Wrote This

Knockabout Media

There’s mystery within the creative process and a story behind every story. In the new podcast How I Wrote This, host Pamela Hensley sits down with acclaimed novelists, essayists, playwrights, translators, poets, and short story writers to learn more about their lives and the events that shaped their work.


Finalist: Best Podcast: Arts, Culture, and Society - Digital Publishing Awards


Follow us on Instagram @howiwrotethisthepodcast

Find out more at our website: www.howiwrotethisthepodcast.com


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

read less
ArtsArts
FictionFiction
LeisureLeisure
BooksBooks

Episodes

Behzad Karim Khani
May 28 2024
Behzad Karim Khani
Behzad Karim Khani is an author whose explosive debut novel Hund, Wulf, Schakal (Dog, Wolf, Jackal) tells a story of violence on the streets of Berlin, and the lives of two immigrant brothers from Iran. It’s a book that elicited rave reviews such as this one in the Suddeutschezeitung: “Sentences you’d want to frame…simply a great work of literature.”Behzad was a boy in Tehran when the Iran / Iraq war ended. With his family, he left and settled in Germany where his ethnicity marked him as an outsider. He grew up fast, fell in with gangs, and nearly went to prison for trafficking drugs. Things got better only when he moved to Berlin, got a job at a famous techno club, and became manager of the upscale restaurant next door where they welcomed guests like Quentin Tarantino and Karl Lagerfeld. Three years later he opened a bar of his own and began trying to write movie scripts. Eventually one the scripts turned into a novel and in 2022 he published Hund, Wolf, Schakal and won a nomination for the Ingeborg Bachmann Award. In February, the book, which was adapted for the stage, premiered at the Maxim Gorki Theatre. Behzad’s recommended reads:Heinrich BöllPeter WeissChristian KrachtHow I Wrote This is created and hosted by Pamela HensleyPresented by Knockabout Media. Original music track Attention to Details by Tyler K. RaumanFind out more at our website: www.howiwrotethisthepodcast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Julia Franck
Apr 23 2024
Julia Franck
Julia Franck was born in 1970 in East Berlin in the former GDR (German Democratic Republic), a part of Germany that, at the time, was behind the Iron Curtain. As a child, she fled with her mother to the West and lived for nine months in a refugee camp, where they were interrogated by agents of the secret police. Five years later, when she was just thirteen, she left her mother’s home and returned to Berlin, this time living on the Western side with friends. Julia is the daughter of an actress and granddaughter of a sculptor whose family history has provided the backdrop for some of her most powerful books. The Blind Side of the Heart (called the Blindness of the Heart in the US), tells the story of a woman who abandons her son on a railway platform in 1945 after surviving the horrors of the Second World War. It was a story based on her own father’s childhood, a man she only met at the age of fourteen. The novel won the German Book Prize, the highest honour for literature in Germany, and went on to sell over a million copies. Two more of her books have been translated into English: Back to Back, based on her uncle’s life at the time when the Berlin Wall was being built; and West, which was adapted for the screen.Julia’s recommended reads:Herta Müller Katja OskampJudith HermannDana VowinckelHow I Wrote This is created and hosted by Pamela HensleyPresented by Knockabout Media. Original music track Attention to Details by Tyler K. RaumanFind out more at our website: www.howiwrotethisthepodcast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.