José F. A. Oliver
Speaker
José F. A. Oliver, of Andalusian background, was born in 1961 in Hausach in the Black Forest, where he lives as a freelance writer. He is an author of poems, short prose, and essays on topics of cultural politics.
Oliver worked as a town chronicler in Dresden (2001) and in Cairo (2004). He graduated writer’s residencies at the MIT in Cambridge (2007), at the Keele University in England (2009), and at the Jacobs University in Bremen (2011). In 2002, Oliver was a guest lecturer at the MIT. In 2007, he held a Chamisso Poetics lectureship at the TU Dresden.
Oliver has received various awards for his work, among them the literary scholarship of the ´Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg e.V.´ (Art Foundation Baden-Württemberg) in 1989, and the residence scholarship of the Berlin Senate in the Literary Colloquium Berlin in 1994. In 1997, he was decorated with the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize. In 2007, he won the cultural award of Baden-Württemberg, as well as the Thaddäus Troll Prize in 2009, and the Joachim Ringelnatz Prize (junior) in 2012.
Oliver is the curator of the literature festival ‘Hausacher LeseLenz’, which he founded in 1998. Together with the ‘Literaturhaus Stuttgart’ he developed the writing workshops for schools, which foster language sensitivity of children and adolescents and expand their understanding in dealing with literature.
His latest publications include: Unterschlupf (2006), Mein andalusisches Schwarzwalddorf (2007), and fahrtenschreiber (2010).