From Nowhere to Number Six: newleaf author on the national bestseller list

Ann-Kathrin Schwarz, newleaf author and former PR manager for the magazine, has written a book that has shot straight into the German non-fiction bestseller lists
at No. 6. Writing under her pseudonym of Anne Weiss
and together with co-author Stephan Bonner, she has
written Generation Doof, a wonderfully ironic and very
scary resume of the state of the nation's IQ. You can find
details and a sample from the
introduction at www.luebbe.de

Ann-Kathrin Schwarz studied at Bremen from 1993 to 2000, including a
period at our ERASMUS partner The University of Ulster at Coleraine in 1996/7 and six
months in Chile in 1999. She worked for newleaf's publicity
department - in fact she was newleaf's publicity department - for several years,
and after graduating at Bremen she went into publishing and is now an editor for fiction and
non-fiction with the Lübbe group.

She was a regular member of Creative Writing Workshop and was first
published in newleaf 3 with her poem 'The way ahead'; here is her two-part poem '
A little girl' from issue no. 11:

A little girl

1
I sit on the bed, putting on my shoes, whistling Eine kleine Nachtmusik,
when she comes into the room and sits down next to me. Waiting. She listens for a
little while, then cocks her head to one side, looking at me, listening to the tune.
Suddenly she smiles in happy recognition:

'Oh - have you seen the film, too?'

2
We go roller-blading for the first time.
She puts on her blades.
She refuses to wear the helmet.
Protest gleaming in her eyes.
Defiance a hot stream through her nostrils.
I make her wear the helmet:
'If you fall, you'll hurt your head.'
Salty fury in her look as she puts it on:
'But if I don't hurt my head, it'll be your fault!'

It was for this poem that in 2001 we got special permission from the artist Quentin Blake,
Roald Dahl's illustrator, to use his famous picture of Matilda reading a book.