Dinçer Güçyeter is a theatre-maker, poet, editor and publisher. He was born in Nettetal in the Lower Rhine region. After training as a toolmaker and a spell working in the restaurant trade, he founded ELIF Verlag in 2011, which he financed for many years through part-time work as a forklift driver. At ELIF Verlag, Güçyeter publishes regional and international poetry, including his own collections «Anatolien Blues» and «Ein Glas Leben» (both 2012) as well as «Aus Glut geschnitzt» (2017). The poetry collection «Mein Prinz, ich bin das Ghetto» (2021) is a search for the roots of his own origins and an exploration of family ties beyond socially inherited ways of life. For this collection, Güçyeter received the Peter Huchel Prize in 2022. The jury praised his «expressionist linguistic force and subtle ambivalence» as well as a world between Nettetal in the Lower Rhine and Anatolia that subverts prevailing post-migrant stereotypes.
With his debut novel «Unser Deutschlandmärchen» (2022, tr. Our German Fairytale), Güçyeter again sets out in search of the origins of his own existence, of language and home. At the centre of this family portrait are the women who shaped his own biography and who also stand for the fates of many guest-worker families. The novel received the Leipzig Book Fair Prize (Fiction) in 2023, and in the same year ELIF Verlag received the Kurt Wolff Sponsorship Award. The material was adapted into three stage productions in Berlin, Münster and Aachen; the Maxim Gorki Theatre production was invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen in 2025. In 2024, Güçyeter received the Else Lasker-Schüler Prize, which honoured both his own poetic work and his publishing commitment to the poetry of others. From 2024 to 2025, he was Stadtschreiber (town writer) of Bergen-Enkheim. In 2025, together with Wolfgang Schiffer, he edited the anthology «Die Backstage eines Buches» (tr. The Backstage of a Book) for ELIF Verlag. His book «Fake Gucci-Jogginghose auf der Lesebühne» (tr. Fake Gucci Joggers on the Reading Stage) was published by Literaturverlag Droschl in 2026.
Dinçer Güçyeter lives in Nettetal.
Last Update: 2026