Prem Krishnamurthy and I met in New York City to talk about his approach to reading, writing, performing and presenting.

In his latest book, On Letters, Prem mentions that the Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov wrote in English for a large part of his career as a way to arrive to writing “as a tourist.”

I liked the idea of becoming a tourist in a language. German is my first language, but since moving abroad in 2015, I rarely use it to read, to write or speak about my work. Since Prem speaks German fluently, conducting the interview in German would allow us both
to become tourists.

During the interview we saw lots of interestingly looking bugs flying around on the High Line. We later learned that those were Spotted Lanternflies an invasive species that feeds on various trees. They also found their way into the typography of the website.