Monique Schwitter and Anna Larcher
Foto: Lou Aurel
Monique Schwitter, born in Zurich, writes prose and dialogue-based works. She studied directing and acting in Salzburg and performed for many years at renowned theaters in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland before publishing her first book in 2005, Wenn’s schneit beim Krokodil (When It Snows at the Crocodile), a collection of short stories that won, among others, the Robert Walser Prize. Her work has been widely translated and recognized with numerous awards. Her most recent novel, Eins im Andern (One in Another), was shortlisted for the German Book Prize in 2015 and won the Swiss Book Prize. It has been translated into a dozen languages. Monique lived in Hamburg from 2005 to 2024. She taught creative writing at institutions such as HAW Hamburg and the Biel Institute of Literature. As president of the Free Academy of the Arts in Hamburg, she focused on interdisciplinary projects at the intersection of text, sound, and image, as well as language and performance.
Foto: Angela Regius
Anna Larcher, born in 1996, constantly tries her hand at speed-reading to keep up with her workload as an editor at Unionsverlag and as a master’s student in German Studies at the University of Zurich. She spent a year studying Creative Writing and Cultural Journalism at the Hildesheim Institute of Literature and has participated in various writing workshops in Switzerland and Austria over the past few years. In 2023, she attended the Klagenfurt Literature Course as a scholarship recipient. Her prose has been published in literary magazines and anthologies, most recently her short story Cure in the Diogenes anthology Holidays by the Sea. She lives in Zurich and is currently working on her debut novel, In Winter, Bees Don’t Fly (working title).
Project
Anna Larcher:
How well does a daughter truly know the person behind the role of her mother? Does the relationship with the mother change when the daughter decides not to become a mother herself? My project tells the story of Mia, in her mid-twenties, who becomes unexpectedly pregnant and decides to have an abortion. After this experience, she begins to reexamine her relationship with her mother, spends several weeks visiting her, and notices how distant she feels from her.
In my writing, I am interested in physicality, society, female genealogies, and the tipping points in relationships. I find myself digging between different tracks and tonalities — an "I" and a "you" perspective—that currently lie loosely side by side. Through the mentorship, I am looking for input and a trained eye to help me determine what I want to explore more deeply and how to connect these elements.
Monique Schwitter:
My mentorship approach is about searching and finding. About figuring things out. About recognizing the potential of a literary project and exploring possibilities, both in terms of content and form. Together, we will examine and question the existing text material, the idea, the story, the characters. We will start digging. We’ll dig deeper. Another layer. We think in layers. Layer upon layer. Each layer enriches the structure. Perhaps we’ll discover and identify lines of connection. In which tradition does the project stand? Where does it come from? Where does it want to go, where can it go?
We want to give the potential room to unfold—on the level of content, language, and form. Our goal is to find the best version of the story in its specific form and unique voice. We will pay special attention to the intellectual depths, backgrounds, and subtexts of the text structure, as well as to its “physicality,” its sound and rhythm, its heartbeat.
