Holger Ehling

Holger Ehling 2014 at the Frankfurt Book Fair

Holger Ehling (born July 7, 1961 in Bad Hersfeld ) is a German journalist and author.

Life

Ehling studied at the Universities of Göttingen and Mainz and began to deal intensively with contemporary African and Caribbean literature in the early 1980s . From 1982 he worked with Koué-Alphonse Yaba on the publication of the journal Nommo , which published scientific articles on African literature . In 1985 he founded the journal Matatu - Journal for African Culture and Society , which in the following years became a platform for young African humanities scholars. In 1989, Matatu was taken over by the Dutch science publisher Editions Rodopi. Ehling stayed with the magazine until 2000 as publisher and editor-in-chief .

His interest in African cultures resulted in a large number of articles for German and English-language media as well as a number of books in which he worked as editor or author. In 1994 the anthology Daughters of Africa was published by Marino Verlag . Black women tell stories that Ehling published together with the Senegalese Koyo Kouoh . In 1996 the cookbook West African Cooking , written together with the Ghanaian Jojo Cobbinah, was published . Courts and their history . In 1997 he published with Peter Ripken Die Literatur Schwarzafrikas - A Lexicon of Authors . From 1990 to 1991 Holger Ehling completed a traineeship at the Hamburg School of Journalism , at the time still headed by Wolf Schneider . In the following years he worked as a freelance correspondent, mainly in Africa. He was one of the first journalists to report extensively on the economic, social and ecological consequences of oil production in the Niger Delta . A close personal relationship developed with the writer and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa , who was executed in 1995 by the Nigerian military regime at the time.

In mid-1994 Ehling became press spokesman for the Frankfurt Book Fair . Under his aegis, the Frankfurt Book Fair was the first of its kind to develop a comprehensive electronic information system. At the end of 1997, Ehling left the Frankfurt Book Fair and settled in London as a correspondent . There he worked as a stock exchange reporter for the n-tv special- interest channel, for numerous daily newspapers, the epd news agency , the stock exchange newspaper for the German book trade and the ARD radio station .

In September 2002 Ehling returned to the Frankfurt Book Fair, this time as Head of Corporate Communications and for some time also as its Deputy Director. Together with the new book fair boss Volker Neumann , who was also installed at the same time , he worked on the realignment of the fair and was responsible for the installation of numerous new presentation forums, the expansion of the international center of the fair and the introduction of the film & TV theme. From 2003, Ehling developed the “Cape Town Book Fair”, which has been taking place since 2006, together with the South African publishers' association PASA. Ehling left the Frankfurt Book Fair at the end of 2005.

Since the beginning of 2006, Holger Ehling has been running an agency in Frankfurt that operates as a service provider in the areas of PR strategy, social media and event management. In his blog and in his monthly column in the specialist magazine "BuchMarkt" he deals with the economic background of the international publishing and media industry. From September 2006 to June 2009 he carried out the “Frankfurter Verlegerprüche” at the Literaturhaus Frankfurt . In 2009 he organized the series “Murderous Neighbors” in the Frankfurter Romanfabrik , in which detective novels from Switzerland and the Netherlands were presented. Since 2008 Ehling has been working increasingly as an author again. His book England, glorious England (Verlag Ch. Links) was published in September 2009. In 2011, London for hand luggage (Unionsverlag), Nordend - the most beautiful forays through Frankfurt (Societäts-Verlag, with Jörg Harraschain) and the specialist books Social Media for Die Verlagspraxis (Bramann Verlag) and sell eBooks - but do it right! (Phil Space Press). With Finding England - An Ausländer's Guide to Perfidious Albion , he published his first English-language book for the public market in 2012.

Since mid-2012, Ehling has been building up the e-book publisher Fleet Street Press , which publishes specialist information and publications on the humanities and social sciences.

Works (selection)

Finding England. To Ausländer's Guide to Perfidious Albion . London The Armchair Traveler at Bookhaus, 2012, ISBN 978-1-907973-24-6 .
Nordend , with Jörg Harraschain, Frankfurt Societäts-Verlag, 2011, ISBN 978-3-942921-07-7 .
Sell eBooks - the right way! . Frankfurt Phil Space Press, 2011, ISBN 978-3-9801932-9-0 .
Trip to London: stories for hand luggage . Unionsverlag, 2011, ISBN 3-293-20512-7 .
England, glorious England . 2nd edition Berlin Links, 2011, ISBN 978-3-86153-547-8 .
West African cooking , Cobbinah, Jojo Göttingen Verlag: Die Werkstatt, 1998, ISBN 978-3-89533-215-9 .