The Ultraviolet Catastrophe

Susan Finlay’s latest novel, The Ultraviolet Catastrophe (Zer0 Books), is set among Berlin’s eighty-plus outer-space start-ups, and features a cast of mad scientists, Astro-Marxists, a neurorobotic AI hivemind, an extinction anxiety addict, the victims of an interrelated crypto-currency gaming scam, and a seemingly endless succession of ravers and gamers in search of the ultimate hallucinogenic, carcinogenic, neu-space-age high ...

In celebration of a novel too close to home and utterly far out, the launch features readings and performances from a circle of the author’s colleauges and friends: Zack Darsee, Tracy Fuad, Nina Hanz, Gabriella Hirst, An Paenhuysen, and Hilary White, whose texts treat with themes of distance, technology, ecology, futurism, and human belonging.

Spike Berlin
Goebenstr. 22, 10783 Berlin
Thursday, 16 Jul 2026
7pm

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ZACK DARSEE was born about noon on a Tuesday. He is the co-author of From the Pocket of Agent Dickinson (Inside the Castle, 2025), a lysergic neo-noir written word-for-word in alternation with Elise Houcek, and the chapbook BELL LOGIC (Spiral Editions, 2022). He runs Tabloid Press in Berlin. This work continues.

TRACY FUAD is a poet and writer based in Berlin and the author of two books of poetry. She co-directs the Berlin Writers’ Workshop and is working on a “novel.”

SUSAN FINLAY is a British author based in Berlin. She writes fiction, cultural criticism, and poetry. The Ultraviolet Catastrophe (Zer0 Books, 2026) is her fifth novel.

NINA HANZ is a German-American writer based in Berlin. Across poetry, nature writing, art writing, and (eco)feminist inquiry, her work lives between gothic atmospheres and animate landscapes.

GABRIELLA HIRST is an artist and writer whose practice spans moving image, performance, installation, and the garden as a site of critique and care. Recent projects examine the connections between plant taxonomies, landscape painting, art conservation, and nuclear history.

AN PAENHUYSEN is a curator and writer. Since 2024, she is the director of The Boxing Gallery, a space for happenings under the auspices of the Fondazione Arthur Cravan, Milan. An enjoys short-format writing like petit-déjeuners littéraires, blog posts, and silly poems.

HILARY WHITE is a writer, literary researcher, former astrophysics dropout (2005), and ongoing space fan. She is the author of Holes (MA BIBLIOTHÈQUE, 2024) and The Visual Novel (Edinburgh University Press, 2025), and a co-editor of Gestures: A body of work (Manchester University Press, 2025). Her postdoctoral project, Forms of Sleep: Literary Experiments in Somnolence, was originally supported by Research Ireland and is currently supported by the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung. This is why she's in Berlin.