KW x DAAD: Elif Batuman and Merve Emre

04.03.2026 / 19:00 – 20:30
With Elif Batuman

An evening of literary conversation with Elif Batuman and Merve Emre, whose work bridges fiction and criticism, the aesthetic life and the life of the mind. Through readings and discussion, the authors reflect on books that shaped them — and on how literature forms both the way we write and experience the world.

Elif Batuman is the author of Either/Or (2022) and The Idiot (2017), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Women’s Prize, as well as the essay collection The Possessed (2010), which began her ongoing conversation with world literature. A longtime staff writer at The New Yorker, Batuman explores the intersections of politics, literature, and life. She is a 2026 Literature Fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program. 

Merve Emre, Shapiro-Silverberg Professor at Wesleyan University, is the author of The Ferrante Letters (2020), The Personality Brokers (2018), and Paraliterary (2017). A frequent contributor to The New Yorker, Emre examines literary institutions, reading practices, and the cultural work of criticism.

This KW × DAAD event is the first in a series co-curated by Liberty Adrien (Curator, KW) and Mathias Zeiske (Head of Literature and Film, DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program), bringing DAAD fellows into dialogue with Berlin’s practitioners.

Conversation in English
Tickets

In collaboration with

KW’s mission is to engage with the central questions of our time through the production, presentation, and discussion of art. Without a permanent collection, flexibility and openness lie at the heart of what makes KW special.

Under the directorship of Emma Enderby, the current program explores how both the city and KW’s building can serve as a framework for a program centered on artists and their processes, local production, community and partnerships, and the social, technological, and ecological present.

KW Institute for Contemporary Art
Auguststraße 69
10117 Berlin

KW Institute for Contemporary Art
Website of Elif Batuman
Elif Batuman on Substack
Website of Merve Emre