May 10, 2021
Deniz Utlu awarded with Alfred Döblin Prize 2021
The Alfred Döblin Prize was donated by Günter Grass in 1979. The Akademie der Künste and the Berlin Literary Colloquium jointly award the prize every two years, either in May or June. The prize amounts to 15,000 Euros and is awarded for a long and still uncompleted prose manuscript in accordance with the founder’s intention.
Akademie Schloss Solitude congratulates the author and former Solitude fellow Deniz Utlu on winning this year’s Alfred-Döblin Prize! On May 8, 2021, Deniz Utlu and five other authors presented their texts and engaged in a debate at Literarisches Colloquium Berlin (Berlin Literary Colloquium), where in the end he could convince the jury, consisting of Marie Schmidt, Sieglinde Geisel and Knut Elstermann.
Deniz Utlu studied economics with philosophical emphasis in Berlin and Paris/France. In 2003, he founded the culture and society magazine freitext, which he edited until 2013. In 2014, his first novel Die Ungehaltenen was published and, in 2015, it was adapted for stage at the Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin. Beside his work on the novel, he also wrote theater plays, poetry, short prose and essays. In different literary events, he dealt with the relationship between literature and politics, for example with the series Prosa der Verhältnisse at Studio Я of Maxim Gorki Theater. His work was awarded several times, for example with the literature prize of Hannover in 2019 and a residency fellowship at Villa Tarabya in Istanbul/Turkey in 2017. Deniz was a fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude within the field German Literature in 2018 and 2019.
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