Eastern Europe occupies a strange position in the symbolic structure called ‘Europe’: it is part of the continent, however, it has not been accepted into the much invoked European ‘we’. Eastern Europe is always that which ‘we’ are not. A place of violence and political crises. This has recently become clear again during the demonstrations in Belarus in 2020/21 and Russia’s extension of the war in Ukraine on 24 February 2022. At the same time, news reportage in Germany is dominated by the image of white, Christian, female refugees as if they were a mirror of its own racist presuppositions. This is contrasted by an Eastern European reality that both in the past and present is shaped by the living together of different people and nations. A place that has more in common with a plural German society than it sometimes appears to have. That is why we have invited authors to a meeting at which it becomes clear: the literature that is produced in Germany today cannot be separated from the realities beyond its geographical borders. A conversation on a collective writing of the present.