Thomas Empl
bangaloREsident@Sangam House

Thomas Empl, born in Munich in 1991, is a writer living in Cologne.

Two volumes of short stories have been published by parasitenpresse: Ausbruch in 2021, and Inneres Zittern in 2023, which critics attested “sinister virtuosity and a grim sense of humour” (review Am Erker). “The political looms like a fine mist in these stories (...)”, wrote the magazine Stadtrevue. “In Inneres Zittern, nostalgic world-weariness always carries its own questionability, and at this point the characters stand up and take responsibility for themselves, for their melancholy, for their existence in loneliness and in precarious working conditions.”

In 2022, the film Matratzen (Mattresses), for which he wrote the screenplay with Florian Schmitz, premiered at the 43rd Film Festival Max Ophüls Preis. Empl has been an artist-in-residence at litfilms – literatur film festival Münster where he collaborated with director Sandra Reyes, and most recently at Künstlerdorf Schöppingen.
 
In 2023, he received the Dieter Wellershoff Scholarship from the City of Cologne. The work on his novel Drei Tage im Leben der Frau Variannitis was supported by a working grant from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

He is part of the writers’ collective Hypertext.

During his bangaloREsidency at Sangam House in January 2025, Empl wants to keep writing the novel Drei Tage im Leben der Frau Variannitis (Three Days in the Life of Mrs Variannitis) which follows two colleagues, an office worker and a failed lawyer, who go on a drinking spree throughout Cologne. Topics are: Office and alcoholism. Hostile architecture and the warmth of interiors. The modern city. Transcendental homelessness. Pessimism and euphoria. The inner trembling in the face of external catastrophes that are imminent or have already occurred. Anger, paralysis, social energy. And: It’s a love story!