Short Story Afternoon | SOMMER KÖLN

In the organizer's words:

Short Story Afternoon
Enjoy reading aloud in a relaxed atmosphere

The Short Story Afternoon combines high-quality literary and exciting short stories with a relaxed atmosphere in the Mediapark.

Short story is the English term for short story. As the name suggests, the special feature of this literary form is its brevity. They are always stories that can be read from beginning to end without interruption. Often great narratives that artfully say a great deal with just a few words. Short stories were printed in magazines in the 19th century and have since established themselves as a narrative form. It offers authors the opportunity to experiment and there are many famous examples of this particular literary art. Make yourselves comfortable and dive with us into three very different, exciting and entertaining stories.

For summer Cologne, LAND IN SICHT e.V. and SK Stiftung Kultur are bringing the popular SHORT STORY NIGHT event series to the Mediapark - for an afternoon edition in the open air. Three Cologne authors will each read a short story and talk more about writing short literary forms in conversation with Kevin Kader. Look forward to an entertaining afternoon with three very different stories.

Authors:

• Thomas Empl, born in Munich in 1991, is a writer living in Cologne. His short story collections "Ausbruch" (2021) and "Inneres Zittern" (2023) were published by parasitenpresse. He was artist-in-residence at Künstlerdorf Schöppingen (2024) and in India at Sangam House Bengaluru (2025), on the initiative of the Goethe-Institut. In 2023 he received the Dieter Wellershoff Scholarship from the City of Cologne. With a high score of 580,607, he is currently the twelfth best Tetris player in the world (Game Boy version).

• Anika Baluran Schäfer (no pronouns) is a writer, performance artist and filmmaker. In her own work, Anika explores Filipino-diasporic identities, Tagalog learning from a second generation perspective, queerness and anti-Asian racism. In doing so, Anika explores (identity) loss and imagination in the face of this. Anika Baluran Schäfer is currently working on a long poem with the working title "Near the River". Anika won 1st place in the Cologne Prize for Young Literature 2024 with an excerpt from it.

• Jonas Linnebank lives and writes in Cologne. He studied German and English language and literature in Cologne and Salerno and works as a DaZ lecturer in adult education. He is co-founder, publisher and editor of the Kölner Literaturzeitschrift(www.kliteratur.de) and also part of the curatorial team of the European Literature Festival Cologne Kalk(www.elk-festival.com). His texts have appeared in literary journals and anthologies. His poetry debut verlassene Hunde appeared in parasitenpresse in 2022. Before that, he also published the Kalk Alphabet there.

Duration: approx. 90 minutes
Location: Mediapark

Summer Cologne 2025
Summer Cologne is back - lively, colorful and diverse: From 22.7 - 20.8.2024 the city is the stage for our open-air cultural program.

☀️ This event is part of SOMMER KÖLN 2025 - organized in cooperation with the SK Stiftung Kultur and the City of Cologne.

All information and the complete program at: www.sommer.koeln