The Reader Berlin and Give Something Back to Berlin are proud to present an evening with Nikesh Shukla on August 1st, hosted at Sharehaus Refugio! Nikesh will be in conversation with Berlin-based authors Musa Okwonga & Saskia Vogel. All three will read excerpts from their books and discuss themes of otherness in their writing. How do you get the story right and make sure you’re accurately representing your people? They’ll dive into stigma, migration, race, the importance of telling a marginalized story, and finding your advocates. Come for an evening of stories, discussion, and community!
Location: Refugio
Lenaustraße 3-4
12047 Berlin
Date: August 1st
Time: doors at 7:30, readings at 8pm
Entry: 5€
The authors’ books will be for sale
While in town, Nikesh will be teaching a workshop with The Reader Berlin called Writing from Experience. Due to popular demand, the one-day workshop will be offered in two sessions: Friday, August 2 and Saturday, August 3. Check out the course description here and email hello@thereaderberlin.com to sign up!
Nikesh Shukla is the author of three novels. Most recently, he authored the critically acclaimed The One Who Wrote Destiny (2018). His debut novel, Coconut Unlimited, was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award 2010. His second novel Meatspace was released to critical acclaim in 2014. Nikesh has written for The Guardian, Observer, Independent, Esquire, Buzzfeed, Vice, BBC2, LitHub, Guernica, and BBC Radio 4. Nikesh is also the editor of the bestselling essay collection,The Good Immigrant, which won the reader’s choice at the Books Are My Bag Awards. He co-edited The Good Immigrant USA with Chimene Suleyman. He is the author of two YA novels, Run, Riot and The Boxer. Nikesh was one of Time Magazine’s cultural leaders, Foreign Policy Magazine‘s 100 Global Thinkers and The Bookseller‘s 100 most influential people in publishing in 2016 and in 2017. He is the co-founder of the literary journal, The Good Journal, and The Good Literary Agency.
Saskia Vogel was born and raised in Los Angeles and now lives in its sister city, Berlin, where she works as a writer and Swedish-to-English literary translator. Her debut novel Permission will be published in five languages in spring 2019. It’s being adapted for television. Previously she worked as Granta magazine’s global publicist and as an editor at the AVN Media Network, where she reported on pornography and adult pleasure products. She volunteers her time as the honorary secretary of SELTA and as part of the team that organizes Viva Erotica, an annual film festival in Helsinki that explores the art, history, and culture of sex on film.
Musa Okwonga is a poet, author, journalist, broadcaster, musician, social commentator, football writer, and consultant. Musa has written on culture, race, sexuality, gender, music, sports, politics, and technology for publications including Africa Is a Country, Complex, Devex, The Economist, ESPN, Foreign Policy, Prospect, The Blizzard, The Guardian, The Independent, The New Humanist, The New Statesman, and The New York Times.
The winner of the 1996 WHSmith Young Writers Competition, Musa is the author of two books on football, A Cultured Left Foot (Duckworths, 2007), which was nominated for the 2008 William Hill Sports Book of the Year, and Will You Manage? (Serpent’s Tail, 2010). He is a contributor to the award-winning anthology The Good Immigrant and to Change Gonna Come, a compilation of poetry and prose which won a 2018 YA Book Prize Special Achievement Award from The Bookseller. He has published one collection of poetry, Eating Roses For Dinner. Musa lives and works in Berlin.
