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.

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.

publications

• Lehnen, Christine (2020): “Post-National Authors, Post-National Literature? An Interview with David Szalay”. In: Alluvium 8.1
• Lehnen, Christine (2019): “European Literature – Made in the UK?”. In: Alluvium 7.4
• 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 Recommendations:

   

   

   

  Atwood, Margaret. On Writers and Writing.
  Boyd, Brian. On the Origin of Stories.
  Campbell, Joseph. The Hero With A Thousand Faces.
  Fludernik, Monika. Towards a New Narratolgy.
  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.
  Kennedy, A L. On Writing.
  Lehnen, Christine. “Exploring Narratives’ Powers of Emotional Persuasion through Character Involvement: A Working Heuristic”.
  Oatley, Keith. The Passionate Muse. Exploring Emotions in Fiction.
  Orwell, George. Why I Write.
  Researchers at OnFiction.ca about the science of fiction
  Rob Morgan at https://gamestoryuk.tumblr.com/ about digital storytelling
  Sacks, Oliver. Gratitude.
  Sklar, Howard. The Art of Sympathy in Fiction.
  Vogler, Christoph. The Writer’s Journey. Mythic Structure for Writers.
  Zeh, Juli. Treideln.