Writer-in-Residence Lucia Mann
This was the second year that the Melton Center hosted Writer-in-Residence Lucia Mann. Mann is a screenwriter, playwright and novelist from Berlin. She has written two feature film movies for the “Herzkino” series (ZDF) and is now writing a romantic comedy that breaks new ground in contemporary German media by featuring a female Jewish protagonist. Her play The Astronaut debuted in New York in 2023; it featured the Grimme-Preis-winning actor August Zirner and was co-directed by Arnon Grunberg (Blue Mondays, Tirza, The Jewish Messiah). Born and raised in Berlin, Lucia also has close ties to the Lubuskie Lato Filmowe Film Festival in Poland and has lived in Israel, the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom. During her residency, Mann is working on a novella called Jan Knopp that explores a major antisemitism scandal in the German feuilleton. The novella follows Jan, a rising star in the German media world with towering ambitions and a message many Germans want to hear. But there is more to Jan than he wants to admit. Mann presented work-in-progress readings of this novella, which she finished drafting this year, in October 2024 and February 2025.
