Please introduce yourself in two or three sentences.
For many years, I’ve worked as a poet at the intersection of literature and education. I engage in many roles: I am an author, a lecturer, an editor, a project director and I organize a transdisciplinary literature outreach programme.
What career experience do you have in your field of consultation?
While working on extremely varied literary projects, I’ve become familiar with and come to appreciate very diverse funding opportunities. Compared to other European countries, Germany’s funding landscape is uniquely diverse, and crowd-funding platforms provide an additional opportunity for writers to realize their ideas with the help of fans. Not every idea lends itself to a crowdfunding campaign, but projects that have a unique character and lasting appeal, and niche products can benefit from this special opportunity for support.
What are typical questions that participants might ask you in a consultation session?
How do I find my crowd? Which crowdfunding platforms are suited to my project? How can I find crowdfunding supporters for my idea? What hurdles will I encounter? What do I have to take into consideration when crowdfunding? How do I design my crowdfunding campaign?
What are some of your professional achievements?
My debut collection, In the morning we are glass (poetenladen 2017), was published in 2021 in Caroline Wilcox Reul’s English translation, by Zephyr Press in the USA. I’ve received grants from the Berlin Senate, the Kulturstiftung Sachsen, the Goethe-Institut Prague and the MuseumsQuartier in Vienna. Together with the filmmaker Ludovico Failla, my cycle of poems Alb was turned into a poem film, nominated for the Feldkircher Poetry Prize in 2022. Early in 2023, poetenladen published my second collection of poems, Tulpa, and I also brought out the chapbook Meteor with SuKuLTuR, featuring poems on (South) Eastern Europe.
What languages do you offer consultation sessions in?
German, English.
Where can you be found in the internet/on social media?
www.andraschwarz.com
https://www.instagram.com/andra.schwarz/
What piece of advice would you offer anyone interested in working in your professional field?
The bigger your network, the greater your chances at successfully crowdfunding your project!
What were your greatest challenges in the early years of your career?
Always having to ‘rethink’ myself, to accept challenges and grow from them, and then, after reaching a new level, to realize with surprise how many various skills can come together favourably in a single person. It will never be boring.