WHEN CLEMENS MEYER’S DEBUT NOVEL Als wir träumten (When we were dreaming) hit the German literary market in 2006, the then twenty-nine-year-old author was confronted with unexpected success; the numerous prizes, unfamiliar media attention, and countless interviews must have come — one would think — as a welcome surprise. However, when his writing career took off, Clemens Meyer (b. 1977 in Halle/Saale) did not fit the image of the young writer who had worked continuously on his writing career until finally making it. On the contrary, in 2006 Meyer portrayed himself as a maverick who liked to show off his tattoos, spoke with a slight but noticeable Saxon accent, and boasted of his exposure to the rough side of life by having worked in the construction industry. Although his publisher S. Fischer exploited these characteristics to market this newcomer, Meyer did not wish to be co-opted by the publishing industry. Yet the writer’s self-stylization stirred much interest in the media, particularly when it became known that he had studied at the Deutsches Literaturinstitut Leipzig (formerly the Johannes R. Becher-Institut). This traditional creative writing school, founded in 1955, has produced a number of highly successful writers, such as Juli Zeh and Saša Stanišić, and had attracted successful writers as visiting professors such as Ilija Trojanow, Terézia Mora, Ulrike Draesner (all of whom are featured in this volume), and, not least, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2009, Herta Müller. Unlike his fellow students, however, Meyer did not seem to wish to adapt to the young literary scene that Leipzig has produced since the mid-1990s, preferring instead to adopt a position outside of this group. Outsiders — that is, characters with whom Clemens Meyer could have identified at the beginning of his writing career — have also been the focus of his writing so far: Meyer is interested in people from the margins of German society, social outcasts who, according to the writer, deserve more literary attention. Such sidelined figures take center stage in Meyer’s novel Als wir träumten and his collection of short stories Die Nacht, die Lichter (The night, the lights, 2008).