Towards an interconnectedness of science and senses/ Intensive writing course at UdK
To become another. Been teaching all week an intensive course on Nature Writing - towards transformation and interconnectedness at UdK. We looked at the survival strategies of viruses, bacteria, mushrooms, genetic modification and poisons. We visited the Robert Koch Institute, spend some time at the National Gallery listening to paintings and discussed silk punk, science writing, sci-fi, speculative fiction, creative non-fiction with texts by Karen Russell, Octavia Butler, Benjamin Labatout, Merlin Sheldrake and Natassja Martin. Our lives are so entangled. Loved working things out with the students, loved to listen to their ideas, loved to spend 5 days or 35 hours together exploring.
Fishing in Japan/ Deutschlandfunk Kultur Weltzeit
While researching bodies of water in Japan, I got side-tracked by all the stories I would gather from talking to fishermen and women. A strange pattern appeared. A new, old way of living off the sea in different ports between Hokkaido and Kyushu. Sometimes so humble, it made my heart ache. My radio piece about the new fishing culture in the land of sushi is now out on German national radio. Weltzeit. Deutschlandfunk Kultur. and is available in the archives for a year. There are some truly silly ideas, like the giant squid statue, there is denial, loss, blaming others, but mostly I saw appreciation and respect for the marine species that become food. There is also a sense of urgency that runs as an undercurrent through every encounter. Listen to the piece here.
Winner Best Literary Travelbook
The Jury for "Best Literary Travelbook" at ITB coined us "Cartographers for the Ears". Happy heartbeat should have been one of the sounds in the book. It was a wonderful experience writing this book with Isaac Yuen. And having also been shortlisted for Best Entertaining Science Book at the German Science Book Awards, we feel that readers have followed us on our dynamic narrative journey to bridge science and senses. Thank you ITB, thank you Knesebeck and thank YOU, Dear Reader.
Learning from the Sea/ Lecture and Workshop at Okeanos Foundation for the Sea
Sharing my two years experience as a wave writer. I looked closely at the connection between forest and sea. The topography of the sea floor. Bodies of water in Japan. The transformation of a whale fall. I read Gilles Deleuze and Robin Wall-Kimmerer, Ursula K. Le Guin and Octavia Butler. I talked with Ama divers and people from the Haida Nation. I took students to the mediterranean to teach them Nature Writing and we met so many whales, that we stopped counting. For two years I kept a Wave Diary through all and everything, jotting down thought, encounters, collecting flotsam and jetsam of an interconnected earth.