Claire-Louise Bennett and Monique Schwitter

On 15 January 2016, Monique Schwitter from Germany and Claire-Louise Bennett from Ireland were invited to read from their works.

Monique Schwitter was born in 1972 in Zurich and lives and works in Hamburg since 2005. She studied acting and directing in Salzburg and went on to perform in Zurich, Frankfurt, Graz and Hamburg.
In 2004 she was awarded the Hermann-Lenz-Stipendium. For her first volume of short stories, Wenn's schneit beim Krokodil (2005), she was awarded the 2006 Robert Walser Prize for the best literary debut of the year and the promotional award of the Swiss Schillerstiftung. In 2008 she published her novel Ohren haben keine Lider and the play Himmels-W, in 2011 Goldfischgedächtnis, a collection of short stories and in 2015 her successful novel Eins im Andern.

Claire-Louise Bennett grew up in Wiltshire in the southwest of England. After studying literature and drama at the University of Roehampton in London, she settled in Galway. Her short fiction and essays have been published in The Stinging Fly, The Penny Dreadful, The Moth, Colony, The Irish Times, The White Review and gorse. She was awarded the inaugural White Review Short Story Prize in 2013 and has received bursaries from the Arts Council and Galway City Council. Pond is her first collection of short stories.