This year, the Festival Neue Literatur partners proudly present the 2026 Friedrich Ulfers Prize to the translator and author Peter Wortsman, recognized for his distinguished contributions to bringing German-language voices to English-speaking readers. Priska Juschka (Lichtundfire Gallery) will deliver the laudation.

About the Friedrich Ulfers Prize Recipient:

Peter Wortsmanis a writer of fiction and nonfiction, poet, playwright, travel writer, and translator from German. His two plays were produced in the U.S. and Germany: “Burning Words,” based on Wortsman’s translation of Recommendation Whether to Burn all Jewish Books,“ a landmark call for religious tolerance, written by German Humanist, Johannes Reuchlin, in 1510, debuted at the Northampton Center for the Arts, in 2006; ”The Tattooed Man Tells All,“ based on interviews he conducted, most in German, with aging survivors of the Nazi concentration camps, was first performed in the U.S. by the Silverthorne Theater, at the Northampton Center for the Arts, in 2020, and then in German translation, at the Deutsches Theater in Göttingen, in 2022. One of his four books of poetry published to date, The Laboratory of Time, inspired Berlin-based trumpeter Paul Brody, and Oldenburg-based tenor to join forces to compose an album of songs of the same title, the song lyrics drawn directly from his poetry. Notable among his four books of fiction are Stimme und Atem/ Out of Breath, Out of Mind, a bilingual (German/English) collection, and the novel, Cold Earth Wanders (Pelekinesis, 2014), a finalist for the Foreword Reviews’ 2014 INDIEFAB Science fiction Book of the Year Award. His travel memoir Ghost Dance in Berlin, a Rhapsody in Gray (Travelers’ Tales, 2014) was awarded an Independent Publishers Book Award. Wortsman collaborated with his brother, Harold Wortsman, on an artists’ book, it-t=i (here and now press, 2005), and with his daughter, Aurélie Bernard Wortsman, on a modern-day bestiary, Odd Birds & Fat Cats (Turtle Point Press (2024).

Among his critically acclaimed translations of German language classics are: Robert Musil’s Posthumous Papers of a Living Author, 2006, Telegrams of the Soul: Selected Prose of Peter Altenberg, Heinrich Heine’s Travel Pictures, Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist, Selected Tales of the Brothers Grimm, Konundrum, Selected Prose of Franz Kafka, all published by Archipelago Books, and Tales of the German Imagination Books, an anthology he also compiled and edited for Penguin Classics, UK, in 2016. His selection and translation, The Golden Pot and other tales of the uncanny, by E.T.A. Hoffmann, (Archipelago Books, 2024) was shortlisted for the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translation Prize. Wortsman has also taken it upon himself to reintroduce forgotten literary gems, like The Creator, by Salomo Friedlaender (Mynona), and letters selected from some 10,000 written by the Berlin literary salonière, Rahel Levin Varnhagen, I Just Let Life Rain Down on Me, Selected Letters of Rahel Levin Varnhagen (Seagull Books, Kolkata, India, 2024). A Fulbright fellow in Freiburg in 1973, a Thomas J. Watson Fellow in Vienna 1974, and a Holtzbrinck Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin in 2010, Wortsman received the 1985 Beard's Fund Short Story Award and the 2008 Geertje Potash-Suhr Prose Prize of the Society for Contemporary American Literature in German.

About the Friedrich Ulfers Prize Laudator:

Priska Juschka is a New York-based curator, writer, and co-founder and director of Lichtundfire (since 2015), a gallery and exhibition space with a distinct cultural program on New York City’s Lower East Side (175 Rivington Street, NY, NY 10002). Born and raised in former West Germany, she studied Humanities at the Free University (FU) in West Berlin, Germany (1985-1990), before relocating in 1992. Since moving to New York City, Juschka has been working as a studio director, artist liaison, independent curator, art consultant, and gallery director. She was an early member of the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA), a Member of ArtTable, a professional organization dedicated to advancing the leadership of women in the Viusal Arts, and a Member of the Williamsburg Gallery Association (WGA) in the early 2000’s.

In the past 11 years, Juschka has conceived and curated more than 100 exhibitions at Lichtundfire, and moderated panels and talks based on social and cultural topics and the underlying human condition. She writes essays on visual art, especially for artist monographs and biographies. As director of Lichtundfire, Priska Juschka has hosted several readings and book launches for Peter Wortsman as part of its continuing cultural program connecting creative fields beyond the Visual Arts.

About the Friedrich Ulfers Prize:

The Friedrich Ulfers Prize was established in 2013 and is awarded annually by Deutsches Haus at New York University to a leading publisher, writer, critic, translator, or scholar who has championed the advancement of German-language literature in the United States. The prize, which is endowed with a $5000 grant, has previously been awarded to Tim Mohr (posthumously), Edwin Frank, Tess Lewis, Riky Stock, Jill Schoolman, Susan Bernofsky, Barbara Perlmutter, Barbara Epler, Burton Pike, Robert Weil, Sara Bershtel, and Carol Brown Janeway. The Friedrich Ulfers Prize is Festival Neue Literatur’s testimony to the rising importance of German-language literature in America.

Friedrich Ulfers is Professor Emeritus of German at New York University. In the past, he served as Assistant Dean of the College of Arts and Science, the German Department’s Director of Undergraduate Studies, Director of the NYU in Berlin Summer Program, and Director of Deutsches Haus at NYU. The recipient of NYU's Distinguished Teaching Medal and Great Teacher Award, and two-time winner of the College of Arts and Science's Golden Dozen Award for Excellence in Teaching, Ulfers has taught not only in the German Department but also in NYU's interdisciplinary programs, offering courses that engage a range of interests, including literary theory, continental philosophy, and the relationships between science, literature, and philosophy. Friedrich Ulfers also served as a professor of Philosophy at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, where he taught an intensive summer seminar on Nietzsche and 20th/21st Century Thought and gave a variety of lectures. From 2006-2009, he was Dean of the Media and Communications Division of the School, and in 2009, he was appointed Professor Emeritus. Friedrich Ulfers received the Heights College’s Faculty Hall of Fame Award and the Bundesverdienstkreuz (Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany) for his commitment to German-American relations in the areas of culture and education.

Date & Time: October 27, 2026, 6:30 – 8:00 PM

Location: Goethe-Institut New York, 30 Irving Place, New York, NY 10003

More Information: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/guests-and-ghosts-tickets-2002097847557?aff=oddtdtcreator