PowerPaola’s work enjoys international renown. She currently lives in Buenos Aires, following a series of extended stays in Paris, Sydney, and San Salvador, among others.  She studied at the Fundación Universitaria Bellas Artes in Medellín, where she founded the art collective Taller 7. PowerPaola has also co-founded artist collectives, such as the internationally operating Chicks on Comics, and has been involved in various collaborative works – magazines, such as Mates, Strapazin, and Chicks on Comics publications, such as Synergy Boat – or the volume Tierra larga (2019), which she worked on together with Pablo Besse under the shared name “no tan parecidos.” In 2011, Argentine publisher Editorial Común published her autobiographical comic Virus Tropical, in which PowerPaola draws an intimate portrait of her Latin American migrant family. The comic received excellent reviews. It was translated into French, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, English, and Korean, and made into a film by Santiago Caicedo in 2017 (the film was screened at the 2018 Berlinale and other venues). The German translation by Lea Hübner was published by Parallelallee in 2022. Since then, PowerPaola has published the graphic novels QP (2014), Todo va a estar bien (2015), Nos vamos (2016), and Todas las bicicletas que tuve (2022), in which she explores themes of sexuality, feminism, family, and identity.

In her inaugural lecture on November 22, PowerPaola will connect the dots between her literary practice in Virus Tropical and Todas las bicicletas que tuve and discuss her other literary publications, including QP and Todo va a estar bien. PowerPaola will use these texts as a foundation upon which to present topics that she is currently exploring in more depth with students in her seminar at Freie Universität, “I’m not talking about me (but also).” Issues discussed in this seminar include the intimate and complex bond between the acts of creating and living, as well as the relation between self and other.

The Samuel Fischer Visiting Professorship for Literature has been awarded by the Peter Szondi Institute of Comparative Literature at Freie Universität Berlin since 1998. It is funded by Freie Universität Berlin, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), publishing house S. Fischer Verlag, and Holtzbrinck Berlin – Inspire Together. Writers from different literary traditions and cultures are invited to teach at the institute for one semester to help facilitate critical reflection upon world literatures.