I write about bodies that won’t cooperate – and about people who dance anyway. I’m drawn to identities that resist definition and to languages that refuse to behave. Often, I begin with something autobiographical – a memory, a pain, an absurd moment – and follow it to the edge, where fiction begins.
My texts tell of (super)heroes in wheelchairs, archaeologists digging beneath New York City, women seeking revenge on distant islands, men who’d prefer their country flat, and dogs who listen better than humans (that one’s still in the works – psst!). I believe in humor and wit, especially when things get serious – and in stories, when nothing else will do.
At the heart of my writing is the Other: what doesn’t fit, doesn’t heal, doesn’t belong. Disability, mortality, injustice. I write with a kind of painful openness – and I want my books to be challenging. Not everything needs to be easy.
Identity, for me, is not just a theme but a matter of form. Each book takes a different shape, experiments with its own rhythm, listens in its own way. I write in literary, in simple, and even in silly language (again: that one’s still in the works). I mix autofiction with myth, reflection with play. Because myths – our ancient ur-stories – are not dead. They shimmer beneath everyday life, beneath the skin, beneath the text.
Christoph Keller, born in 1963, is the author of novels, short stories, essays, and nonfiction. His work includes Ich hätte das Land gern flach (I’d Prefer My Country Flat, S. Fischer, 1996), which was awarded the International Lake Constance Prize; Der Boden unter den Füssen (The Ground Beneath Our Feet, Limmat, 2019), recipient of the Alemannic Literature Prize; and Jeder Krüppel ein Superheld (Every Cripple a Superhero, Limmat, 2020), which garnered wide media attention. His best-known book is the autobiographical novel Der beste Tänzer (The Best Dancer, S. Fischer, 2003).
Together with Swiss writer Heinrich Kuhn, he has published three novels and the collection of microstories Alles Übrige ergibt sich von selbst (Everything Else Follows Naturally, Edition Literatur Ostschweiz, 2015).
As an editor, he co-edited We’re On: A June Jordan Reader (with Jan Heller Levi, Alice James Books, 2017) and The Essential June Jordan (with Jan Heller Levi, Copper Canyon Press / Penguin Modern Classics, 2021). He also edited the anthologies Hip Hops: Poems about Beer and Russian Stories (Everyman’s Library, New York, 2018/19). In 2023, he published Und dann klingelst du bei mir: Geschichten in leichter Sprache (And Then You Ring My Bell: Stories in Easy German, Limmat).
Every Cripple a Superhero has been available in its English original since 2022 (Penguin Random House UK).
After more than twenty years in New York, Christoph Keller now lives in St. Gallen, Switzerland, with the poet Jan Heller Levi. He writes in both German and English.
