recently directed

Dear Mrs Woolf

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European Balcony Project

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FANCIES by Ellie Lewerenz

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All's Well That Ends Well

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2020

• June to August: The Silenced Symphony (working title), written by Elisabeth Lewerenz, directed by Christine Lehnen and Ina Habermann, produced by CIRCE theatre, will premiere in Bonn at the Brotfabrik and continue its run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival

2019

• 30th May: Dear Mrs Woolf adapted from the letters of Virginia Woolf by Christine Lehnen, starring Lisa Pohlers, Theaternacht 2019, Brotfabrik Bonn
• 1st June to 9th June: Dear Mrs Woolf at the Frankenstein Festival at the Brotfabrik Bonn
• 7th December to 14th December: Troilus & Cressida by William Shakespeare, directed by Christine Lehnen and Eva Fürst, produced by the BUSC, Brotfabrik Bonn, Bonn

2018

• 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

Christine Lehnen has three great passions: books, the theatre, and Europe. Oh, and food. She has been writing fiction her entire life and teaching creative writing at the University of Bonn since 2014. Her directorial debut at the FEATS Festival in Antwerp 2018 received two nominations; her short stories have been awarded the prizes of the Young Academies of Europe and the Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen. She likes her stories European, with a side of feminism and a pinch (or two) of queer. (Have we mentioned she also likes food?)

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 fiction and spends her free time directing plays as well as promoting a federal, social and united Europe: sometimes on public squares right under the nose of Ludwig van Beethoven, sometimes on twitter, sometimes in newspapers. While finishing up two postgraduate degrees, one in Political Sciences and one in English Literatures and Cultures, she advocates for a European prize for literature and 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 has written for German and French newspapers and outlets such as Le Taurillon 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, stay tuned to discover C. K. Williams (honouring her grandfathers), who will be out with her thriller début FLOWERS FOR THE DEAD with One More Chapter/HarperCollins in October 2019. 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.

publications

• 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 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.
  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.
  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.