Acclaimed German author Thomas Pletzinger will be on hand to discuss his new book about basketball legend Dirk Nowitzki. The book is full of stunning photography by Tobias Zielony, whose work for the book will be on display in our new community space.
Toronto author Akosua T. Adasi will moderate the discussion and we'll be eating courtesy of Cafe Landwer.
Thomas Pletzinger was born in Münster, Germany, in 1975. He grew up in the industrial Ruhr region, got his M.A. in American Studies from the University of Hamburg and is a graduate of the German Literature Institute in Leipzig. Today, he lives with his family in Berlin and works as a writer and translator.
His first novel “Funeral for Dog” was published in 2011. In 2019, his nonfiction book The Great Nowitzki spent 30 weeks on the SPIEGEL bestseller list – the American translation is published by W. W. Norton & Company and is in stores now.
Pletzinger has translated Gerald Stern’s Everything Is Burning, David Mazzucchelli’s Asterios Polyp, John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Pulphead, and Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother? among others.
For the eight-part series Funeral for a Dog, based on his novel by the same name, Pletzinger co-wrote the teleplays with Hanno Hackfort and Bob Konrad. The series premiered on SKY on March 17, 2022.
Pletzinger has translated Gerald Stern’s Everything Is Burning, David Mazzucchelli’s Asterios Polyp, John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Pulphead, and Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother? among others.
For the eight-part series Funeral for a Dog, based on his novel by the same name, Pletzinger co-wrote the teleplays with Hanno Hackfort and Bob Konrad. The series premiered on SKY on March 17, 2022.
Born in 1973 in Wuppertal, Germany, Tobias Zielony studied Documentary Photography at the University of Wales, Newport, before he continued with artistic photography at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig under Timm Rautert in 2001.
Tobias Zielony works equally with video and photography and his work is located beteen fiction and documentary. He is known for his photographic depiction of juvenile minorities in suburban areas – a subject he already set out with during his studies in Newport. For his first book project “Behind the Block” (2004) he then extended his research to a total of four European cities to observe adolescents in public spaces often during night times. Themes and social realities his research touches upon include structural change, migration and drug abuse, as well as sex work as shown in “Big Sexyland” (2006-2008) and “Jenny, Jenny” (2013).
For “Manitoba” (2009-2011) Tobias Zielony spent time with adolescents of indigenous origins living in Winnipeg and the province of Manitoba, Canada. His critical approach to documentarism manifests in a specific aesthetic and relationship with fiction. People are often portrayed in a casual fashion that is sensitive of the visual language, gestures and poses a person uses to set their stage. In 2015 the artist participated at a group show for the German Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale with his work “The Citizen” (2015).
He had group shows for example at Bozar Center for Fine Arts, Brussels (2015) and the 2nd Montevideo Biennial (2014) and solo shows at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2011) and Berlinische Galerie (2013). He participated in the International Studio and Curatorial Program, New York, and was awarded the Karl-Ströher-Preis in 2011. In 2021 he hold his first retrospective "The Fall" at the Museum Folkwang in Essen.
Akosua Adasi is a Toronto-based writer and editor. She writes on a wide range of topics including film and television, literature, and celebrity culture. She has written for Document Journal, VSP Consignment and other publications. Like every sane person, she’s obsessed with oat milk and Tik Tok.
