Backstage SO36/ photo by Nils Stehle
Michaela Vieser is a Berlin-based award-winning author of eleven books, including the national bestseller Tea with Buddha and the Sound Atlas, winner of best literary travel book, together with Isaac Yuen. She explores liminal spaces through science, sensing, and sensemaking, playing with narrative, language, and research. Her narrative work has appeared on Deutschlandfunk Kultur, BBC, FAZ, among others. Michaela’s features and documentaries have been nominated for the Bavarian film prize and the Grimme prize. She was Nature Writer in residence at the Jan-Michalski Foundation, received the German Prize for Nature Writing Scholarship and co-founded the Living Libraries for Nature Writing in 2021 and the Intelligent Landscapes in 2022 and was awarded Wave Writer for the Okeanos Foundation in 2022 and 2023.
“Her books and articles often deal with transience and things that are in danger of disappearing.”
— Frauke Oppenberg, SWR 2 Tandem
“She likes to trace the non-obvious, looking for the extraordinary in what we perceive as seemingly normal. ”
— Juliane Spatz, HR 2 Doppelkopf
“She is a ‘wave writer’ and thinks about the sea full-time.”
— Katrin Heise, Im Gespräch, Deutschlandfunk Kultur
More Interviews with Michaela
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"Vieser and Yuen are cartographers for the ears."
Maximilian Sippenauer on Capriccio/ ARD, a small V feature on their Atlas of unusual Sounds - A guide to landscape and imagination
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"To be able to feel my way into the world and find words for it - that's an essential part of nature writing to me."
Interview with Ann-Kathrin Marr for Textmanufaktur Creative Writing Workshops, 2022
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"Who steps through the door to Michaela Vieser's workspace, enters a different world."
Interview with Aygül Cizmecioglu for Deutsche Welle
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"A childlike curiosity sparkles in her big steel-blue eyes. "
Immersing into new territories. Interview for Deutsche Welle with Aygül Cizmecioglu
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![Deutschlandfunk Kultur. Plus Eins. Gesa Ufer]()
"She is a Nature Writer, loves to research, Japan Studies Major, a passionate traveller and sound collector."
Intimate Interview with Gesa Ufer on Plus Eins/ Deutschlandfunk Kultur, November 2024: “Self-discovery in a Japanese Monastery and in the Deep Sea”
Latest Book by Michaela Vieser
The Sound Atlas - A Guide to Landscape and Imagination/ together with Isaac Yuen
Winner Best Literary Travelbook/ ITB Nominated Best Entertaining Science Book/ Spektrum der Wissenschaft
A sonic revolution is underway. The expanding field of acoustics is enabling us to tune into a multitude of invisible worlds. Scientists can transform energy transmissions from distant galaxies into audible harmonics. Sound artists use vibration sensors to help us probe into the deepest parts of the world. Hydrophones are revealing the vibrant chatter of the underwater world. But with this newfound ability to eavesdrop into new acoustic realms comes a responsibility not only to understand, but to protect them, sometimes from ourselves.
With the onset of the Anthropocene, humanity has unintentionally shaped new soundscapes while obliterating others. We have introduced noise and chaos into where once there was silence, and we have extinguished what once there was rhythm, melody, and harmony. We feel these losses also with our bodies.