Helene Hegemann at Skylights Books June 15, 2011

The L.A. literary community is in for a treat, when the German literary enfant terrible Helene Hegemann presents her book Axolotl Roadkill and her film Torpedo at Skylight Books.
Axolotl Roadkill is described as a furious coming-of-age debut which struggles with the insight that everything meaningful has already been said.

Helene Hegemann
was born in February of 1992 in Freiburg and is often labeled as "Wunderkind of the digital Boheme".
She grew up with her divorced mother until age 13, and after her death moved to Berlin to be with her father. It was during that time that she started writing.
In 2007, Helene’s drama Ariel 15 premiered in Berlin and was later turned into a radio play.
Her screenplay Torpedo was turned into a movie in 2008. Hegemann directed it herself and won the Max-Ophühls-Prize.
In 2010 her first novel Axolotl Roadkill was published in Germany and instantly received a lot of praise by literary critics. But Hegemann was faced with accusations of plagiarism and eventually admitted to have copied some passages of her book from an online blog.
Her confession sparked a controversy about the issue of intertextuality and copyrights.
Nevertheless, Axolotl Roadkill has been translated into 15 languages and made into a drama that had its premiere in November of 2010 in Hamburg.

Helene Hegemann is currently an artist-in residence at the Villa Aurora.