Zeitgeist 2026 | Literature Festival | Guests and Ghosts
Thu 29 Oct · 6:30 PM Goethe-Institut Washington · Logan Circle
Join us for an evening of literature and conversation. In collaboration with The Art of Freedom ( EUNIC DC ) and the Festival Neue Literatur in New York, the Zeitgeist Literature Festival in Washington DC – co-organized by the Austrian Cultural Forum Washington , the Goethe-Institut Washington , and the Embassy of Switzerland – presents Guests and Ghosts , which will feature readings by, and a conversation among, authors Tanja Paar (Austria), Michael Lentz (Germany), and Laura Vogt (Switzerland). Guests and Ghosts brings together acclaimed German-language writers Tanja Paar, Michael Lentz, and Laura Vogt, who explore history, inheritance, belonging, and accountability in their recent work, and how forces beyond their characters’ control shape their conscious and unconscious choices. The authors will read from their books, discuss how they deploy literary tactics to expand on inherited notions of hospitality and its opposites, and explore how history haunts their characters and plots. The conversation will be moderated by Alta L. Price .