Unleashing the Rhetorical Power of the Image: An Introduction to Gabriele Petricek’s Writings and an Interview

Gabriele Petricek was the invited guest author at the 2015 Women in German Conference. She is an Austrian writer who has published Zimmerfluchten (2005), Von den Himmeln, Triptychon (2009), and Joyce’s Choice oder: Ein Hund kam in die Küche (2011) as well as more than thirty short stories and poems for which she has received numerous prices and awards. Presently, she is working on her fourth book project, a collection of seven novellas. Her texts are known for the skillfully crafted language into sound and color, form and measure, and the many delicate details that can gauge the mood of a situation. The motif of the wanderer as traveler, pilgrim, or flaneur is central to her narratives. Her protagonists exhibit Petricek’s feminist consciousness of self-respect, self-determinacy, and self-reliance, which has less to do with gender issues and more with her inclusive, democratic worldview and her perspectival approach to identity and alterity.