Luxembourg 🇱🇺
Francis Kirps (1971) is a Luxembourgish author, satirist and journalist. After graduating from high school, he studied psychology in Strasbourg and worked, among other things, as a school psychologist and primary school teacher.
Since the 90s he published poetry and prose in various anthologies and magazines in Germany and Luxembourg.
In 2000 and 2001 he was awarded at the Concours Littéraire National. Shortly thereafter, he turned to the poetry slam scene and in the following years completed over 500 slam and reading stage performances throughout the German-speaking world.
Founding member, publisher and editor of the Bonn literary magazine EXOT from 2005 to 2014.
Since January 2014 he writes satirical articles for the German newspaper taz.
Founding member (2020) and since April 2023 Vice-President of the new Luxembourg writers' association A.LL Schreftsteller*innen.
In 2020 he was awarded the Prix Servais and the European Union Prize for Literatur for “Die Mutationen”. So far, he has published 3 short story collections and 1 novel. Translations of “Die Mutationen” appeared in 5 languages.
Die Mutationen (The Mutations)
Translation: Ksenija Čočkova
"Mutations" consists of 7 stories and 1 poem, each based on a classic text, from Little Red Riding Hood to Virginia Woolf!
The domestic fly Leon Zumsa wakes up one morning and finds himself transformed into a 'monstrous beetle,' in other words, a human being. The lion from Kurt Tucholsky's satire "The Lion Escapes!" mutates into a polar bear exploring hipster Berlin. The model of the Venus statue from Prosper Mérimée's story "La Venus d’Ille" works as a young slave in a 'firm' that shows incredible parallels to today's working world. "The Anecdote from the Last Prussian War" (Kleist) is set in the future, where the last four people are fighting against each other. Ingeborg Bachmann's "The Invocation of the Great Bear" is crossbred with the myth of Chthulhu by Lovecraft, resulting in a poem that strangely evokes Gotthold Ephraim Lessing.