Germanic & Slavic Studies Thursday, March 31, 2022 - 11:00am University of Georgia Tate Theater Film Lecture Program Join us for a reading, discussion, and screening of film clips with Thomas Pletzinger, author of the biography on German/American basketball legend Dirk Nowitzki: „The Great Nowitzki - Basketball and the Meaning of Life” (W.W. Norton, 2022) Mr. Pletzinger is a Berlin-based German novelist, journalist, sportswriter, and translator. He studied American Studies in Hamburg and Creative Writing at the German Literature Institute in Leipzig. He is visiting UGA to read from and discuss his work on the Dirk Nowitzki biography and the current filming of the documentary based on this book. German basketball Legend Dirk Nowitzki played 21-years for the Dallas Mavericks and was also a member of the German National team and hence is considered a legend in Germany and the US. Regarding his previous work, Pletzinger’s award-winning debut novel Funeral for a Dog (Bestattung eines Hundes, 2008) was adapted for the screen (he co-wrote the screen play) and premiered this year as eight-part series on the German network SKY. He further wrote the non-fiction book about a Berlin Basketball team, Gentlemen, wir leben am Abgrund (2012). Among his translations into German are Alison Bechdel's Are You My Mother? The German edition of his non-fiction book The Great Nowitzki (2019) was 30 weeks on the SPIEGEL (German magazine) bestseller list. The event is co-hosted by the Department of Germanic & Slavic Studies at the University of Georgia, the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts at UGA, Georgia Tech's School of Modern Languages, Bauerfeind USA, and Goethe Zentrum in Atlanta. The event organizer and moderator is Dr. Berna Gueneli, Associate Professor of German at the University of Georgia. For further information on his work, see Thomas Pletzinger’s personal website: http://thomaspletzinger.de/autor/
