Ozan Zakariya Keskinkılıçis a Berlin-based political scientist and writer exploring queerness, religion, migration and memory. He studied political and social sciences in Vienna, Berlin, and Cambridge. His acclaimed nonfiction book „Muslimaniac. Die Karriere eines Feindbildes“ was published by Verbrecher Verlag in 2023. Alongside academic texts, he writes essays, columns, prose, radio plays, and poetry. Hiswork has been translated into several languages, including English, Italian, Czech, French, and Kazakh. His poetry debut „Prinzenbad“ was published by ELIF Verlag in 2022. Keskinkılıç has been nominated for the Clemens Brentano Prize and the Dresden Poetry Prize, and received the Wolfgang Weyrauch Prize in 2025. His texts are also part of multimedia exhibitions shown at the Museum of European Cultures Berlin, the Künstlerhaus Bethanien and the Literaturpassage Vienna. His debut novel „Hundesohn“ will be published by Suhrkamp in September 2025.

“In Schöppingen, I continued to follow the traces of animal spirits and plant stories, which I am using as the starting point for my current poetry project. In my poems, I weave together mythologies, religious narratives, and queer archives to negotiate desire, belonging, and the future. The focus is on images of nature and metaphors that build bridges between the animal, plant, and human worlds. I also found what I was looking for in the Künstler*dorf: Statues of Mary, different plants and the tranquility of the landscapes to invent new stories. The exchange with other cultural historians, scholars, and artists from different disciplines enriched this process. From my time in Schöppingen, I take with me numerous impressions and a sense of community and collective transformation that will accompany me as I continue writing.”