theatre

recently directed

2018

  • 6th April to 14th April: And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (starring as Judge Wargrave), Brotfabrik Bonn
  • 18th May to 23rd May: Fancies by Ellie Lewerenz (directed by Christine Lehnen and Ina Habermann), FEATS Festival, Antwerp, and Brotfabrik Bonn
  • 10th November 2018, 16h: European Balcony Project Bonn, Münsterplatz, Bonn

    • about

    Christine Lehnen has been writing fiction her entire life. She has been been teaching creative writing 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 has written for German and French newspapers and outlets such as Le Taurillon and the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger and has been a judge of the Young Literature Award of her hometown Recklinghausen since 2015. Christine has lived in Canada, the United States, Australia, and Paris, and is now based in Bonn where she writes, teaches, researches fiction and spends her free time directing theatre plays and obsessing over twitter as well as the fate of the European Union. While finishing up two postgraduate degrees, one in Political Sciences and one in English Literatures and Cultures, she advocates for a federal Europe as well as a European prize for literature and a mentoring programme to help young writers without industry connections, especially from a working class background.

    Her social fantasy and sci fi fiction is published under the pen name C. E. Bernard, most recently the PALACE OF GLASS trilogy (Blanvalet, 2018).

    news

    Posted on

    Directing Bonn’s European Balcony Project + press

    Bonn University has featured an article on Christine Lehnen and her writing workshop in the magazine forsch. The article, written by Ulrike Klopp, gives an account of the writing workshop as well as the challenge of juggling different projects and jobs. Christine Lehnen was invited to the LesArt, literature radio programme on Deutschlandfunk Kultur.  She …

    Continue reading “Directing Bonn’s European Balcony Project + press”

    research and teaching

    publications

  • Lehnen, Christine (2016): “Exploring Narratives’ Powers of Emotional Persuasion through Character Involvement: A Working Heuristic”. In: Journal of Literary Theory 10 (2).
  • Lehnen, Christine (2015): Defining Dystopia. A Genre Between The Circle and The Hunger Games. A Functional Approach to Fiction. Marburg: Tectum.

    teaching:

  • Novel Writers’ Workshop (University of Bonn)

    The Novel Writing Workshop at the University of Bonn, first taught in 2014, is open to students from all disciplines. After a special application process, students may spend several semesters working on their novels, cover every stage from the first idea over outlining, writing the first draft, editing and polishing to submitting. The workshop focuses especially on a combination of theory and application, with particular emphasis on the craft of storytelling and the latest findings of narratology, a functional approach to fiction proposed by researchers such as Keith Oatley, Raymond A. Mar, or Melanie Greene. The students work on projects that represent all the variety of young contemporary fiction in the region, from genre fiction over accessible literary to innovative language experiments. Every semester, students’ work is showcased to editors and agents, e. g. from DuMont, Kiepenheuer & Witsch and Bastei Lübbe.

    Student Reading Recs:

    Boyd, Brian. On the Origin of Stories.
    Campbell, Joseph. The Hero With A Thousand Faces.
    Fludernik, Monika. Towards a New Narratolgy.
    Frey, James N. How to Write a Damn Good Novel.
    Gardner, John. The Art of Fiction.
    George, Elizabeth. Write Away. One Novelist’s Approach to Fiction.
    Gottschall, Jonathan. The Story-Telling Animal. How Fiction Makes Us Human
    Kehlmann, Daniel. Diese Sehr Ernsten Scherze.
    Lehnen, Christine. “Exploring Narratives’ Powers of Emotional Persuasion through Character Involvement: A Working Heuristic”.
    Oatley, Keith. The Passionate Muse. Exploring Emotions in Fiction.
    Researchers at OnFiction.ca about the science of fiction
    Rob Morgan at https://gamestoryuk.tumblr.com/ about digital storytelling
    Sacks, Oliver. Gratitude.
    Samantha Shannon at samantha-shannon.blogspot.com about the English-speaking publishing world
    Sklar, Howard. The Art of Sympathy in Fiction.
    Vogler, Christoph. The Writer’s Journey. Mythic Structure for Writers.
    Zeh, Juli. Treideln.