In Translation: Book Launch of Charlotte Gneuß's Red Skies at Chapters

Welcoming translator Lucy Lee Jones in conversation with Ambika Thompson about Charlotte Gneuß's newly translated novel, set in the GDR. Charlotte Gneuß: Red Skies Set in the former GDR in 1976, sixteen-year-old Karin Köhler is experimenting with red lipstick and in love with Paul, an art school dreamer with a motorbike, while her parents' marriage and the family's Škoda both threaten to give out beneath her. When Paul's road trip leads to his disappearance, two policemen arrive at the family's door and Karin, under suspicion and under pressure, is drawn into a confusing web of misleading information, unsure who she can trust. Although the story is rooted in East Germany, its heart is universal, a young girl caught in a terrible situation, needing someone to listen but not knowing how to ask for help. About Lucy Lee Jones: Lucy Lee Jones is a translator and writer from the UK based in Berlin. She has translated the work of Brigitte Reimann, Ronald M. Schernikau, Theresia Enzensberger and Anna Seghers, among others, and is a co-founder of the translators' collective Transfiction in Berlin. She used to host the reading-workshop series Fiction Canteen, and her own texts have appeared in SAND journal, LitMag, 3:AM Magazine and Pigeon Pages NYC, who nominated her for a Pushcart Prize in 2018. About Ambika Thompson: Ambika Thompson (they/them) is a Berlin-based writer with over forty stories published internationally. They hold an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph, served as fiction editor at SAND Journal from 2022 to 2025, and, since 2024, teach creative writing and serve as Managing Director of the Reader Berlin, an international platform offering workshops and mentoring for writers. About Charlotte Gneuß: Charlotte Gneuß was born in 1992 in Ludwigsburg, after her parents left East Germany. She studied social work in Dresden, creative writing in Leipzig, and playwriting in Berlin, and is a guest author for ZEIT Online and editor of the anthology Glückwunsch, published by Hanser Berlin. Her debut novel, Gittersee, was longlisted for the 2023 German Book Prize and won the 2023 Jürgen Ponto Foundation Literature Prize and the aspekte Literature Prize for best German-language debut. In 2024 she received the Nicolas Born Debut Prize, followed by the 2025 Grimmelshausen Support Prize and the 2026 Wolfgang Koeppen Prize.