Calla Henkel presents Other People's Clothes in conversation with Elvia Wilk

Two tabloid-obsessed American art students abroad find themselves at the center of their own scandal in Calla Henkel's unforgettable debut, OTHER PEOPLE'S CLOTHES.

Fellow exchange students in their early twenties, Zoe and Hailey are anxious to spend their year in Berlin immersing themselves in the city’s infamous club scene and building the social world they’ve always desired. Their Berlin accommodations seem too good to be true and the girls soon grow suspicious that their novelist-landlady is using them as inspiration for her next thriller. Zoe and Hailey decide to create novel-worthy plotlines for themselves: crafting new personas, hosting outlandish parties, and finally gaining the notoriety they’ve been craving. However, as the year goes on their lives start to unravel and events spiral beyond their control— with deadly consequences.

Equal parts stylish, lacerating, and painfully honest, this debut is perfect for readers of Emma Cline and Ottessa Moshfegh. Berlin-based Henkel is an exciting young author with huge star potential—her plays and artwork have already been exhibited in museums and galleries across the globe; and Emmy-nominated writer Alexa Karolinski (Unorthodox) is set to adapt OTHER PEOPLE’S CLOTHES for television after a heated eight-way auction. Henkel’s clever debut is every reader’s ticket to Berlin this February!

Calla Henkel was born in 1988 in Minneapolis, MN, USA. A writer, playwright, director and artist, she currently lives and works in Berlin. She has staged plays at Volksbühne Berlin, The Whitney Museum of Art, as well as at New Theater, the experimental theatre space she founded and programmed in Berlin from 2013-2015. Her art writing has been published in periodicals such as Texte zur Kunst, Spike, Mousse, and others. Her artistic work with Max Pitegoff has been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide. She currently operates a bar, performance space and film studio called TV in Berlin. Other People’s Clothes is her debut novel.

Elvia Wilk is a writer living in New York. Her work has appeared in publications such as The Atlantic, Frieze, Artforum, Bookforum, n+1, Granta, BOMB, and the Baffler, and she is a contributing editor at e-flux journal. Her first novel, Oval, was published in 2019 by Soft Skull Press and a book of essays called Death By Landscape will be published in 2022, also by Soft Skull. www.elviapw.com