In the fourth episode of the podcast auto:montage, Cluster member Barbara Bausch and the author Dorothee Elmiger discuss storytelling, experience-based writing, the importance of not understanding and the question of where the political might be located within literature. 

Since her debut, Elmiger has developed a poetics that seeks new forms of engaging with the gaps, ruptures and instabilities of contemporary reality. Pushing the boundaries of narration, her books are attentive to broader social conditions while remaining self-reflexive about their own procedures. Taking her multiple prize-winning 2025 novel Die Holländerinnen as its starting point, the conversation also addresses the relationship between Elmiger's most recent books.

auto:montage is a podcast on contemporary writing that discusses recent publications in conversations with scholars and guests from the literary field. Initiated by the Arbeitskreis Politische Ästhetiken at Literaturforum im Brecht-Haus and produced in cooperation with the Fritz-Hüser-Institut für Literatur und Kultur der Arbeitswelt, it brings together practical and academic perspectives.

The episode is available on the Literaturforum im Brecht-Haus website and on major podcast platforms.