TOUCHES. TRACES. ECHOES.

Reading & Exhibition with Annie Wenstrup, Rike Scheffler and the Picador Professorship, celebrating 20 years! What connects us to the memories, histories, and legacies of people we never met? Could it be a story, a place, an object, or a material trace? And how do we remain connected to histories that reach us only through fragments, stories, and absences? Leipzig University welcomes Dena'ina poet and essayist Annie Wenstrup as the Picador Guest Professor for winter term 2026/27 . Rooted in Dena'ina stories and shaped by questions of inheritance, memory, and belonging, her work explores how we relate to what has been passed down to us, and to what remains only partly accessible. Her poetry collection "The Museum of Unnatural Histories" approaches these questions through the form of an imagined museum. The event takes place in the presence of Heidi Specker's exhibition Damenzimmer/Herrenschnitt. A Homage to Aenne Biermann, which is currently displaced at GfZK and engages with collections, family memories, historical research, and material legacies. After the reading and talk, all guests are invited to visit the exhibition, either on their own or with a tour guide. In conversation with poet, musician, and curator Rike Scheffler, Wenstrup will reflect on material traces, cultural inheritance, and what objects, places, and bodies can carry of the histories we inherit. The evening is part of the anniversary year of the Picador Guest Professorship, marking 20 years of welcoming international authors to Leipzig. The Picador Guest Professorship is brought to you by Uni Leipzig, American Studies Leipzig, DAAD Artist Program and Holtzbrinck Berlin. In cooperation with EDIT Magazine and Stadt Leipzig, Referat Internationale Zusammenarbeit. Free admission - Get your ticket now before they’re gone!