Leipzig Book Fair / Leipzig liest: Swiss events

From 19 to 22 March 2026, Leipzig Book Fair will be hosting Leipzig liest, a reading festival bringing literature to various reading venues at the fair and across the city.

Leipzig liest offers publishers and authors a major platform on which to present their latest works. As part of Leipzig liest, the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia will be organising two events at the Neues Schauspiel Leipzig and supporting numerous other readings by Swiss authors, among others, at the Swiss joint booth.

Glamour meets horror in the feminist hall of mirrors – Carte blanche for the queer-feminist event collective feministischer salon basel

Featuring Nora Osagiobare, Petra Piuk, Gianna Rovere & Katja Brunner
Moderators: Katha Florin Baur & Franca Schaad (feministischer salon basel)

Four authors from Switzerland and Austria will hold up a witty, weird and perhaps even wayward literary mirror to our present times. Their feminist hall of mirrors is designed to distort, reproduce and shatter societal perceptions: of daily life and power, of bodies and gazes, of technologies, techniques and desires.

Nora Osagiobare’s debut novel Daily Soap (Kein & Aber) tells the story of Toni, whose search for solace amid everyday racism, family turmoil and reality TV makes her realise that her life is turning into a soap opera. Who is watching whom when domestic upheaval intersects with public performance?

Gianna Rovere’s Episoden von Alltagselefanten (Verlag sechsundzwanzig) gathers, probes and shifts. Her kaleidoscopic short texts produce surprising connections between elephants and women, between bodies/volumes and the gazes shaping them. A literary exploration of self-doubt, shame and resistance – set in motion by a casual yet condescending glance at a zoo.

Petra Piuk’s dystopian novel Hotel Love (Leykam) is set in 2031: women’s rights have been abolished, AI and men have assumed control. This anti-utopia propagates the ‘new family’ and a man creates a perfect, obedient female partner for himself. Wicked satire meets an oppressive vision of the future — one frighteningly close to our present times.

Blending literature and music, the second part of this evening of readings will be curated by Katja Brunner. Her Die Kunst der Wunde (Verlag Der gesunde Menschenversand) poignantly dissects our present day and age. Here, polyphony reveals societal fissures: between freedom and control, dignity and violence, state and body. An unsettling literary journey through individual and collective chasms and resistance — and a riveting encounter with the thought-provoking power of language.

An evening of readings, discussions and performances, curated by Katha Florin Baur und Franca Schaad (feministischer salon basel): four perspectives, many reflections – and questions that remain unanswered.

Contemporary Swiss literature: Flurina Badel, Laura Vogt & Julia Weber

Featuring music by Joy Frempong, the Swiss-Ghanaian singer and electronic artist
Moderator: Wiebke Porombka

Flurina Badel, Laura Vogt und Julia Weber will discuss their most recent work with Wiebke Porombka (a literary editor at Deutschlandradio). Among other themes, they will consider the loss of people and places, transcience and grief, reconciliation and love — and the possibility of self-empowerment. The evening will also feature music by Joy Frempong (OY), the Swiss-Ghanaian singer and composer, whose work moves freely between electronica, Avant-pop, Afrobeats, improvisation and jazz.

Translated by Ruth Gantert, Flurina Badel’s debut novel Nebelflüchtige (Rotpunktverlag) tells the story of two young people from the Lower Engadine who experience the sell-out of their native valley in very different ways: Aita must accept that her brother sells their parents’ house to the highest bidder, while Luis, her old school friend, desperately tries to convince the locals to stand up to real estate speculators. A polyphonic, poetic and gripping novel about the clash of different worlds.

Laura Vogt’s Das Jahr des Kalks (Dörlemann) is an intriguing novel about a young artist and mother who must bid farewell to her dying uncle. His impending death inevitably reminds her of her father, who abandoned his family when the protagonist was a small child. Confronting these two sources of pain, she begins exploring lime. Juxtaposing the abstract and the concrete helps her cope with her grief. A subtle and insightful literary exploration of transcience and reconciliation.

Julia Weber’s Weil ich Ruth bin (Limmat Verlag) tells the story of a very special person. Like her mother and grandmother, Ruth is born with fur, which she sheds at the end of her childhood. Ruth is endowed with ‘the power’, which she shares with others. In her, they see the happiness which could exist yet does not, and also what they have forgotten and now miss. Enter Linda: tall, beautiful and married Linda. What next? An astonishing, magical story told in a uniquely sensual language.