German- Language Student Creative Competition 2026

Fiction

“Kabinendruck”

Matthew Holian

Matthew Holian is from Galway and studied German and Spanish teaching at the University of Limerick. He is passionate about languages and culture and enjoys sharing this enthusiasm through teaching and writing. In his free time, he likes to travel, read extensively, and play the piano.

My creative piece considers the implications of climate change and societal ageing on the airline industry. Set in a not-so-distant future, it tells the story of a failed actress whose dreams come to fruition in the stratosphere. In this challenging environment, her stage presence begins to crack under the weight of internal and external pressures.Through this dystopian narrative, the piece argues that humans are, in many ways, the chief instigators of their own undoing – a truth hard-earned at 36,000 feet.

Drama/ Film / Role Play

“Der Kristallsee”

Mira Danielak

Mira Danielak is in the final year of her Bachelor’s degree in English, German, and Creative Writing at the University of Galway. Her creative focus lies in writing screenplays about the climate crisis, drawing inspiration from contemporary English, German, and Polish ecocritical texts. She is also strongly influenced by her family background and their personal experiences with the natural landscapes of Ireland and Poland.

Pairing the concept of human ageing with the destruction of the ecosystem and solastalgia, the grief caused by environmental change, Der Kristallsee utilises montage to offer insight into the effects a lack of human-nature co-existence has upon the world around us. Through the characters of Andrzej and Zdzisław, we learn that the natural world has the possibility to grow alongside us, to be a constant in our lives, but only if we choose to care for it.

Poetry

“Der ewige Strand und andere Gedichte” 

Chloe Beechinor-Collins

Chloe Beechinor-Collins is a student of German and Russian at the University of St Andrews. She is a DAAD UK-Ireland Young Ambassador and German Convenor. She is interested in intercultural communication, as well as the translation of literary and lyrical texts. 

My set of poems centres around how different organisms of the Earth interact with the beach: what they use the beach for, what they take from the beach, and how climate change and ageing has affected the beach. It intends the encapsulate the fraught relationship between nature and human in the face of climate change.