Strategien Neurechter Literaturpolitik

In the organizer's words:

Rebecca Spilker in conversation with literary scholar Kevin Kempke and authors Laura Laabs and Anselm Neft

On 8 and 9 November 2025, organizers from the neo-right-wing spectrum are organizing the "Seitenwechsel Book Fair" in Halle as a supposedly liberal alternative to the Frankfurt Book Fair taking place a few days earlier. Since protests against the presence of right-wing publishers took place there in 2017, there has been a controversial debate about whether and how the literary industry should deal with the demand for freedom of expression and journalistic openness in all directions. One spokesperson and organizer of "Seitenwechsel" is Susanne Dagen, who runs the Loschwitz bookshop in Dresden and sits on the city council for the AfD. Together with Ellen Kositza and her husband Götz Kubitschek, the publisher of the right-wing Antaios Verlag, she is working to spread anti-identity, anti-migration and anti-trans impulses in bourgeois and literary circles. Her literary podcast "Umgeblättert. Beaten. Reading with the right" is just one example of this.

On this evening, Kevin Kempke from the University of Stuttgart will introduce the issue. Afterwards, he, the author Laura Laabs ("Adlergestell", Tropen 2025) and the author Anselm Neft ("Späte Kinder", Rowohlt 2022), who deal intensively with the topic in literary and journalistic terms, will discuss with the moderator Rebecca Spilker: What can it mean if, in the course of the political successes of right-wing parties, the literary scene is to be appropriated and right-wing ideas are increasingly becoming socially acceptable again?

Price information:

€ 12,-/8,- Hall ticket € 6,- Livestream