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Gotha Library Scholarship for Emma Braslavsky

This year, author Emma Braslavsky has been awarded the Gotha Library Scholarship to research her next book "Gummi" (rubber). It is awarded by the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Thuringia, the Friends of the Gotha Research Library, the Gotha Research Centre and the Literary Society of Thuringia. With the research grant, the co-operation partners would like to give national and international authors the opportunity to come to Gotha once a year for their literary projects and to work with the holdings of the Gotha Research Library.

Emma Braslavsky
Author Emma Braslavsky receives the Gotha Library Scholarship this year. (photo: Erfurter Herbstlese)

While she is still on a reading tour with her science fiction novel Erdling (Suhrkamp, 2024), Erfurt-born author Emma Braslavsky is devoting herself to her next project: "Gummi" is about utopian thinking, faith and hope and relentless research for the future. The story, about what was probably the most momentous invention of the early 19th century, is told by the two God-fearing, Protestant wives of the "king of rubber" Charles Nelson Goodyear. "My research in the Gotha Research Library serves to understand scientific thinking in the first half of the 19th century, in particular the influence of Protestant views on science and nature," explains Braslavsky. Above all, the author has to make sense of the voices of Goodyear's two wives: "They were both very reserved, God-fearing cogwheel women, whom I don't want to stereotype. They are the opposite of Jane Austen-style femininity."

The Chair of the Friends of the Gotha Research Library, Dr Miriam Rieger, is looking forward to Emma Braslavsky's novel project with excitement: "With its holdings on the culture of knowledge in the early modern period, the research library is a place of attraction and work for researchers from all over the world. The great response to our scholarship for authors shows that the Research Library is also a source of inspiration for literary creation. We are already looking forward to seeing how Emma Braslavsky's stay in Gotha will be reflected in her next work."

The author:
Born in Erfurt in 1971, author Emma Braslavsky has received several awards. She received the 2021 Harald Gerlach Thuringian Literature Scholarship for her novel Erdling, which was published by Suhrkamp in 2024. Her short story "Ich bin dein Mensch", which was nominated for the German Science Fiction Award in 2020, was made into a film directed by Maria Schrader and received the Silver Bear at the 71st Berlin International Film Festival, among other honours. In summer 2024, Emma Braslavsky will be a Fellow at the Villa Aurora in Los Angeles. She will take up the Gotha Library Fellowship in November 2024.

A reading with the author is planned for Tuesday, 26 November 2024, at 5 pm at the "Kulturstiftung Thüringen" office in Gotha.

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