Christine Lehnen has been writing fiction her entire life and teaching the novel writing workshop at the University of Bonn since 2014. Her short stories have been awarded the prizes of the Young Academies of Europe and the Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen. She was nominated for the RPC Fantasy Award and the Lovelybooks Reader Award. As a journalist, she writes for Der Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, The New Federalist, Le Taurillon, DW.com and 42 Magazine. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Manchester, researching contemporary re-writings of the Trojan war as a lieu de mémoire.
Born in the Ruhrgebiet (the German equivalent of Sheffield or Pittsburgh), Christine has lived in Canada, the United States, Australia, and Paris, and is now based in Bonn where she writes, teaches, researches and spends her free time hiking in the Seven Mountains and reading the collected works of John Irving and John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. While finishing up two postgraduate degrees, one in Political Sciences and one in English Literatures and Cultures, she helps young writers without industry connections, for example by providing a platform for young writers at the University of Bonn to meet agents or by serving as judge of the Young Literature Award of her hometown Recklinghausen (going strong since 2015!). She is the founder of 42 Magazine and writes for German, English and French publications such as DW.com, Le Taurillon, 42 Magazine and the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger. Her novels, written in English, are published all over; for a taste of the fantastic, go find her under her pen name C. E. Bernard (honouring her grandmothers), who has most recently written the PALACE saga (Blanvalet, 2018/2019); for a taste of suspense, go see C. K. Williams (honouring her grandfathers), whose thriller début FLOWERS FOR THE DEAD was published in March 2020 with One More Chapter/HarperCollins, with the follow-up LOCAL WHISPERS slated for 2021. Her research has been published in the Journal of Literary Theory and Alluvium, an open access journal on 21st century writing and 21st century approaches. More often than not, you will be able to find her on a train flitting to and fro in Western and Central Europe or the United Kingdom, realising once again that she has forgotten to bring lunch, and proceeding to buy all the croissants that live in Bruxelles Midi. During a global pandemic, she is most likely to be in Bonn, out on a hike, or finally finishing up the expansions to the The Witcher III.
agent: Thérèse Coen