Christine Lehnen is a novelist, researcher and journalist. She has been 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 has written for DW.com, The Wire India, The New Federalist/Le Taurillon and the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger. 42 Magazine. After completing two Master’s Degrees in Bonn and Paris III, one in Political Sciences and one in English Literatures and Cultures, she is currently pursuing a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Manchester, researching contemporary historical novels as innovative and emancipating memory practices for the 21st century.
Born in the Ruhrgebiet in the West of Germany, 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, listening to Tingvall Trio on her grandfather’s old record player and reading the collected works of Haruki Murakami. She helps young writers without industry connections, for example by providing a platform for young writers at the University of Bonn to meet agents and by serving as mentor and juror for the mentorship and stipend programme of PAN e. V., the National Network of Fantasy Authors in Germany. She is the founder of 42 Magazine and a regular contributor to DW.com. 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), author of the PALACE saga (Blanvalet, 2018/2019) and the WAYFARER saga (Blanvalet/Heroic Books, 2021/2022); 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 publishing in 2021. Her research has been published in the Journal of Literary Theory, Antigone Journal and Alluvium.