My Father’s Eyes, My Mother’s Tongue – Images and Language Beyond Belonging

Deniz Utlu was born in Hannover in 1983 and studied Economics at the Free University of Berlin and at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. His debut novel Die Ungehaltenen (The Indignant) was published in 2014 and was adapted for the stage at the Maxim Gorki Theatre in Berlin in 2015. His second novel, Gegen Morgen (Towards Morning) in 2019 and Vaters Meer (My Father’s Sea) in 2023, both by Suhrkamp Verlag. He is also the author of plays, poetry and essays and conducts research at the German Institute for Human Rights. In 2021 he won the Alfred-Döblin Prize for an extract from Vaters Meer and the Bavarian Book Award 2023 for the published book. Utlu lives in Berlin.

Meryem Deniz is an Assistant Professor in the German Studies Department at Dartmouth College. She received her Ph.D. in German Studies and Classics from Stanford University. Her research focuses on late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century German literature and poetics, contemporary transnational literature, and migration studies as they intersect with the environmental humanities and (new) materialisms.