Anne Grietje Franssen

Anne Grietje Franssen was selected for the 2026 Shortlist with Am I allowed to grieve my self-chosen abortion?

Anne Grietje Franssen is a Dutch journalist and author who, until recently, was the Scandinavia correspondent to Dutch newspapers Trouw and FD. She currently works at culture and debate center De Balie, in Amsterdam, producing programmes around the topics of climate, nature and the future of agriculture. In addition, she is writing two books with publishing houses De Bezige Bij and Alfabet Uitgevers. One book concerns the indigenous Sámi people and the green colonization of their land. During their eight seasons, Franssen lived and migrated with semi-nomadic reindeer herders on the tundra. The other book is about her life on a small and car-free Swedish island during her years as a correspondent. Her academic background is in post-colonial history and journalism

Kerstin Kohlenberg

​​Kerstin Kohlenberg was selected for the 2026 Shortlist with Not again!

Kerstin Kohlenberg was born in Koblenz, Germany. After spending a year as an au pair in Paris, she studied sociology in Marburg, Berlin, and New York. She worked for ZDF-Television in New York and Berlin and completed a traineeship at Tagesspiegel. In 2004, Kohlenberg joined the weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT, where she first served as deputy head of the feature section „Dossier“ and later moved to the newly established investigative department. From 2014 to 2021, she headed DIE ZEIT’s Washington bureau. Since returning to Berlin, she has been working as a reporter, primarily writing about the United States. Kerstin Kohlenberg has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Herbert Riehl-Heyse Prize, the Theodor Wolff Prize, the German Journalism Prize, and the Reporter Prize. For DIE ZEIT, she produced the successful seven-part America podcast “Die Patrioten” in 2022. In June 2024, her book about the USA, “Ein amerikanisches Versprechen,” was published by Klett-Cotta Tropen Verlag.