Academy of Writing: Learning literary writing

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“War and crisis. Fascism and climate collapse. Wherever you look, you see anger and frustration and people yelling. We’re living through an unsettling time; the future seems to have become fragile. And yet people are still celebrating, making vacation plans, and having children – the world is full of contradictions (and sometimes you need to contradict) – but how do we tell this story?”

This was the question posed by author Charlotte Gneuss and Hannes Ulbrich, an editor at Piper Verlag, to the applicants to the Bavarian Academy of Writing. Students from all faculties at LMU Munich, as well as from the Universities of Erlangen and Bayreuth, were invited to submit short texts of three to five pages in length that considered the present simultaneity in literary form. Gneuss and Ulbrich reviewed more than 60 submissions before selecting 12 participants for the seminar, which they run together. At the same time, students from the Technical University of Munich and the Universities of Regensburg, Augsburg, and Bamberg were able to apply to attend a seminar led by author Manuel Niedermeier and Katharina Hierling, an editor at Penguin Verlag.

On 3 July, the participants from both seminars will present their texts at a joint final reading.

A long success story

The Bavarian Academy of Writing has been offering seminars for university students since 2011. The academy is coordinated by Literaturhaus München and supported by the seven participating universities, including LMU, the Sulzbach-Rosenberg Literary Archive, and the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts. One of the academy’s founding principles is that the university seminars are open to all students. They can be attended by students who have been writing for a long time, but also by any students who have now decided they want to give writing a try. Students of veterinary medicine are just as welcome to attend as physicists or linguists. More than 200 students have now graduated from the academy. Their names appear in literature competitions such as Open Mike, in literary magazines, and regularly feature among debut authors at publishing houses.

One reason for this success is that students who have had little contact with the literary world receive professional guidance from the seminar leaders – always a team comprising an author and an editor – and develop a sharper appreciation of literary texts. “But almost more important is the fact that students who have previously experimented mostly with writing on their own come into contact with other writers and can swap ideas with each other,” says Markus Ostermair, who is a graduate of the academy and now a successful writer himself. Ostermair oversees the organization of the academy. At LMU Munich, it is based at the Center for Contemporary Literature, which is led by Professor Frieder von Ammon.

“Students who attend the writing seminars offered by the Bavarian Academy of Writing can gain valuable experience – guided by an experienced team of literature experts and engaging with a group of students from different subjects and from a variety of universities in Bavaria – that will benefit not only their writing, but also their own personal development. Ideally, they come away able to write better texts and with a boost to their self-confidence. What’s certain is that this helps them progress much more than they would on their own. No AI can replace this,” says Frieder von Ammon.

Between January and July, the selected students meet over three weekends, on each occasion at a different university from the network. Over the course of six months, they have the opportunity to engage with their own texts and with those written by the other participants on the course under professional guidance. “The seminar weekends always run from Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon and are intensive in the very best sense of the word,” says Ostermair. In a safe setting, the participants discuss their texts, hone their appreciation of their own prose and prose written by others, and complete writing exercises to help them engage with the skill of writing literature. Over time, they refine their texts, explore different approaches and perspectives, sometimes discard passages, and develop completely new scenes.

Professional feedback and constructive engagement

Oliva Dent, who is in the fourth semester of the master’s degree program in General and Comparative Literature at LMU and is one of the selected participants at the academy, had already considered applying for the seminar two years ago, but hesitated because she didn’t think she had a good enough chance of being successful. “When the call for applications for this year’s cohort came out, I immediately had an idea for the topic, and writing the text for the application was so much fun that I kept pushing an upcoming term paper further and further back to do this,” she says. As she had not had much previous experience of literary writing, she found the timeframe and structure of the seminars particularly helpful: “The deadlines and writing exercises forced me to ignore any self-doubts that I had and simply produce text,” says Dent.

Elias Gambarte, who is also one of this year’s academy participants, appreciated the constructive way in which author Charlotte Gneuss and editor Hannes Ulbrich led the seminar, as well as the feedback that students were able to give one another in the protected setting of the course. “The best thing about it was the group,” he says. “My biggest aha moment was realizing how important it is to engage with other people – and that you shouldn’t retreat into your own space when you’re writing.”

From a protected setting to the public stage

At the end of each seminar, all the participants’ texts make their way from the intimate setting of the course room to a larger audience: There is a final reading at which they present the works of literature they have created to the public. “This is always a very special evening,” says Markus Ostermair. “The students read out the texts they have worked on so intensively and they get to experience live the impact that these texts have.” The audience will include not just friends and acquaintances of the authors, people with an interest from the university and the city, invited agents and editors, but also previous graduates of the academy. Over the years, a vibrant network of graduates has been created. “This might be the best thing of all,” says Ostermair. “The students remain in touch with one another through literature.”

The next seminar at the Bavarian Academy of Writing for students of LMU and the Universities of Erlangen and Regensburg has already been announced. Applicants may submit texts of three to five pages in length on the topic MY NEIGHBOR – THE STRANGER. The seminar will be led by Julia Wolf (author) and Ludwig Lohmann (freelance editor). The deadline for submitting applications is 1 September 2026.
More information is available on the Literaturhaus München website.

On 3 July, the participants from both seminars will present their texts at a joint final reading.