Myriam Khouri (*1986 in Heidelberg, Germany) writes novels as well as lyrical and scenic texts. She studied philosophy, art history and psychoanalysis in Frankfurt am Main, followed by fine arts in Karlsruhe and Vienna. Since then, she has combined literary writing with visual and scenic forms of expression

She used the two months in Schöppingen to work intensively on the manuscript of her second novel and to present a chapter from it in a staged reading. The novel with the working title „Manel. A Desert Story“ is set in Algeria and France, in which the author deals with the closely interwoven history of the two countries and their effect on the protagonist. She visits Algeria for the first time, meets her father’s family there, and travels on to the Algerian Sahara with two relatives. The desert as a place of longing, a projection surface, a myth and a fragile ecosystem is a central motif of the novel and a kind of fixed star of Manel’s journey. During her stay in Schöppingen, the author noticed aesthetic parallels between the imagined desert and the flat and wide landscapes of the Münsterland. Changes in light can be observed here with similar nuances as in the desert, and the wind, which almost nothing can stop, plays just as important a role in driving the many wind turbines as it does in reshaping the sand and rock forms in the Sahara.