Image: We are happy to announce that our Spring 2026 Max Kade Writer-in-Residence will be Jan Brandt! In 2014, the Max Kade Distinguished Visiting Professorship (or Writer-in-Residence) was established at the University of Georgia. Supported by a grant from the Max Kade Foundation, with additional funding from the Franklin College of Arts & Sciences, it allows the Department of Germanic & Slavic Studies to bring an outstanding German studies scholar to campus each year to teach, lecture, and foster scholarly exchange between German and American academic communities. Jan Brandt, born in a small town called Leer (which means empty) in 1974, lives as a freelance writer in Berlin and East Frisia. When he is not writing, he runs ten kilometers three times a week. Since 1860, people from all generations of his family have emigrated to the USA, some of the descendants live in Kansas City, Missouri, others in Newport, Rhode Island, and some in Columbus, Georgia. He has received several awards for his literary writing, including being Writer in Residence at the German House in New York City, at Villa Aurora in Pacific Palisades, CA, at the Yaddo artists' residence in Saratoga Springs, NY, and at Ledig House in Omi, NY. His first novel about a German village in the age of globalization, "Against the World", was a finalist for the German Book Prize. At the University of Georgia, he wants to present his own work as a basis for autobiographical writing, discover the literary potential of the students and work together on their own life stories, as well as explore the transatlantic roots of the horror novel – from E.T.A. Hoffmann and Edgar Allen Poe to Stephen King and Dana Grigorcea. We look forward to everything Jan will bring to our program this spring! (Photo provided by Anika Buessemeier)
