Translator Susan Bernofsky is awarded the Ulfers Prize by Friedrich Ulfers at the Opening Ceremony of the 10th Annual Festival Neue Literature. Bernofsky said, in part, "Sometimes I feel like the luckiest person in the world. I've loved writing and stories since I was a little girl, and I loved the German language from the first day of German 101 in 9th grade at Benjamin Franklin Senior High School in New Orleans, Louisiana, and I'll be forever grateful to my first German teacher Julia Schueler who taught me her love of this language that she herself had learned in exile in Berlin--her parents were Mensheviks who fled the Soviet Union with their infant daughter in 1923. The rich body of literature written in the German-speaking countries has been dear to my heart right from the beginning, ever since Franz Kafka and the Brothers Grimm first rocked my adolescent world. And getting to translate some of these gorgeous stories I love and write them in English has been just the biggest thrill (even though, yes, it's a lot of work and sometimes a struggle). I am so grateful for the loving community I've found that shares these loves of mine, and am grateful to have been helped and encouraged by so many to make a career as a translator: teachers, mentors, editors, colleagues, friends." (photo: Stefan Falke)