Author’s Reading: Andere Sorgen

Katharina Pressl, (c) Aleksandra Pawloff

ÖSTERREICH LIEST this year because of Covid 19  outdoors in July

Katharina Pressl, born in 1992 in Wolfsberg, Pressl studied linguistics at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and completed studies in transcultural communication – English and Austrian sign language – in Graz and Edinburgh. Pressl works as a coach for sign language at the Kinderhände Centre and for health and social matters at Prosa – Projekt Schule für Alle. As part of the ‘Anteaters Against’ collective, she organises cultural and educational policy events at Container 25 in Wolfsberg. She is an editorial staff member and author at the Tortuga magazine project. “Andere Sorgen” (Other Worries, 2019) is her first novel.

OTHER WORRIES – Residenz 2018

What’s to be done when ordinary life simply becomes too much? When your mother has to go into residential care and the family home must be cleared out and let. When everyone expects the narrator to finally look for a sensible job and start a family? When normality-induced melancholia hits, there’s only one thing for it – hit back. Ideally where it’s least expected. A revolt is instigated in the care home; Jola delivers inflammatory speeches in her sequinned gown; the local youth gang of “domestic poachers” turns life in the small town upside down; a kidnapping morphs into a seaside mini-break, much to the delight of the home’s residents. And then suddenly Malina appears. Malina, who’s prepared to do almost anything and sometimes oversteps the mark.