I am honored to receive the German Award for Nature Writing 2023. The award is sponsored by the publishing house Matthes & Seitz Berlin in cooperation with the Federal Environment Agency and the Art and Nature Foundation. The competition is under the patronage of Dirk Messner, President of the Federal Environment Agency. The prize is endowed with 10,000 € and a six-week writing stay in the premises of the Art and Nature Foundation amid its extensive natural area. The award ceremony is on September 10th at 6 p.m. in Berlin in the Silent Green.

Members of the jury this year were the literary scholar and author Ludwig Fischer, the literary mediator Brigitte Labs-Ehlert, the literary critic and author Tobias Lehmkuhl, the literary and cultural scientist Steffen Richter and the French writer and translator Cécile Wajsbrot.

Jury statement: In the cycle of poems miami t:ex[i]ting, Susanne Eules addresses Florida's most famous city, which, like so many other major cities, is threatened by rising sea levels. A threat that does not impress the capitalist hedonism of the Sunshine State. Might a “whirlwind of plastic waste from the north atlantic gyre” be whizzing around the harbor towers, Miami remains the “alpha city with a coral chain”. You go on a cruise ship and happily ride the »Leviathan of the global warming roller coaster«. Pierre Aronnax and Ishmael, the old water heroes, don't have much to say in this world anymore. Starbucks coffee shop, which shares the name with the Pequod's helmsman, and Kyogre, the "weather legend" from the Pokémon game, now rule in their place. Susanne Eules sets the verses in motion as if they had a wave machine at their disposal: sometimes like flotsam, sometimes like whitecaps, these verses undulate across the pages, playfully, virtuoso and with satirical poignancy: »o greenland you new florida«!