About Erostepost

Erostepost

Erostepost — written in lower case, erostepost, in the association's own styling — is an Austrian literary magazine published in Salzburg since 1987. It appears twice a year and is published by the association of the same name, Verein Erostepost, which is based at the Literaturhaus Salzburg, the Salzburg literature house. The association also awards an annual literary prize, the Erostepost-Literaturpreis, whose documented winners run from 1989 to 2024 and include writers who went on to national prominence. Erostepost is a member of the Dachverband Salzburger Kulturstätten, the umbrella organisation of Salzburg cultural institutions. Its website is erostepost.at, and its bibliographic record is held under ZDB number 2250077-7.

Salzburg supports two long-lived literary magazines, and they are usefully contrasted. SALZ, founded in 1975 and published by the Leselampe literature forum, is the senior title: quarterly, closely tied to the documentation of Salzburg's literary life, and publisher of an annual issue for the Rauris Literature Days. Erostepost, founded twelve years later, is the semiannual title whose documented emphasis — in the Salzburg literature house's own description of the house's two magazines — is the promotion, in the first instance, of young German-language authors, and whose annual prize makes it a talent-spotting institution as well as a journal. Both magazines are produced under the same roof, in the Literaturhaus Salzburg, which makes that house one of the most productive literary addresses in Austria.

An association at the Literaturhaus Salzburg since 1987

Erostepost has been published since 1987 by the Verein Erostepost, the association bearing the magazine's name, with its seat in the Literaturhaus Salzburg. The association form is the standard Austrian vehicle for a literary magazine, and the literature-house address gives the title something many small magazines lack: a permanent institutional home, with event rooms, an audience that attends readings in the same building, and neighbouring literary organisations — the Leselampe forum that publishes SALZ, and the prolit association with its small publishing programme — as daily colleagues rather than distant peers.

The Literaturhaus Salzburg's own account of its house magazines, preserved in reference accounts, describes Erostepost as appearing since 1987 under its association and promoting above all young German-language authors, awarding its literary prize annually. That description, from the institution that houses the magazine, is the most authoritative short characterisation available, and this profile follows it: Erostepost is a promotion magazine, a Förderzeitschrift in spirit, whose pages and whose prize exist to move younger writers toward readers, publishers and further prizes. Its membership in the Dachverband Salzburger Kulturstätten, Salzburg's umbrella body for cultural venues and initiatives, documents its recognised place in the city's cultural infrastructure beyond the literary world narrowly defined.

A semiannual rhythm

Erostepost appears half-yearly — two issues a year. Semiannual publication is a deliberate scale, shared in this Austrian group with Schreibkraft of Graz and with the post-2000 book-format Podium: it concentrates editorial effort into two substantial numbers rather than spreading it across a quarterly rhythm, suits an association whose members also run a prize and events, and matches the production capacity of a small editorial team working alongside other jobs. Across the span from 1987 to the present, two issues a year accumulate into a run of more than seventy numbers — a shelf that documents, in sequence, the younger Austrian and German-language writing of four decades as one Salzburg association chose to present it.

The economics implied by that rhythm are the usual Austrian literary-magazine economics, and they are stated here in general terms because no verified circulation figure for Erostepost is published in the summary sources: subscriptions and single-copy sales, association labour, and the public cultural funding that the city and province of Salzburg and the Austrian federation provide to literary journals. This profile deliberately gives no circulation number for Erostepost, because none is documented in the reference record; readers comparing Austrian titles should note the absence rather than treat any estimate as fact. The magazine's significance, like that of its peers, rests on the writers it has published and honoured, which are documented, rather than on sales, which are not.

The Erostepost-Literaturpreis

The association's annual literary prize is the best-documented part of Erostepost's public record, with a winners list preserved from 1989 to 2024. A prize attached to a magazine does double work: it brings manuscripts to the editors — competitions attract submissions from writers the magazine might never otherwise see — and it gives the magazine a second, ceremonial presence in literary life, in which its judgment is expressed not by publishing a text but by honouring one before the Austrian literary public. The prize's themes in its documented later years show a magazine engaging its moment: the 2018 prizes were awarded on the theme Liebe jetzt, Liebe now, Liebe wow — love now in three registers — and the 2021 theme was Krasses Klima, a stark climate.

The winners list rewards close reading. The first documented winner, in 1989, was Josef Haslinger, who became one of Austria's best-known novelists. The 1990 winner was Wilfried Steiner; 1993 brought a shared award including Bettina Balàka, later a prominent Austrian novelist and a contributor to several magazines in this group; 1994 included the poet SAID. The middle years record Helwig Brunner in 2003 — the Graz poet who also appears in the history of Lichtungen — and Ron Winkler in 2006, a significant German poet, evidence that the prize's reach extends beyond Austria into the German-language world. Later winners include Wolfram Lotz in 2010, who became one of the most performed German-language dramatists of his generation; Mario Wurmitzer receiving an acknowledgement honorarium in the no-prize year 2015, when the jury awarded recognition payments instead of a main prize; Martin Peichl winning first prize in 2021 and appearing again among the 2024 winners; and the 2024 awards to Sebastian Guhr, Sofie Morin and Martin Peichl closing the documented list.

Writers published in the magazine

The reference record names a selection of authors who have published in Erostepost itself, and even that short selection is telling: O. P. Zier, the Salzburg writer, in issue number 2 of 1988; Kurt Wölflingseder in the same early issue; Kathrin Röggla, who published in issue number 5 of 1990 and became one of the leading German-language prose and theatre writers of her generation; and Bettina Balàka in issue number 10 of 1993. The dates matter. A magazine founded in 1987 was, by its second issue, printing Salzburg's own O. P. Zier, and by 1990 and 1993 was giving early magazine publication to Röggla and Balàka, writers whose major reputations lay ahead of them.

That is the promotion function in action, and it is documented rather than merely claimed: the literature house says the magazine promotes young German-language authors above all, and the surviving early record shows it doing exactly that within its first six years. A complete author index of Erostepost across nearly four decades does not exist in the summary sources, and this profile does not pretend to one; but the pattern established by the documented sample — regional anchor authors alongside early appearances by writers of future national standing — is the pattern the prize list confirms on a larger scale, from Haslinger in 1989 to Lotz in 2010.

Erostepost and SALZ: two magazines under one roof

The Salzburg literature house states that two literary magazines are produced in the house: SALZ, since 1975, documenting Salzburg's literary life and publishing international and Salzburg authors, and Erostepost, since 1987, promoting young German-language authors and awarding its annual prize. That pairing is an efficient division of labour, and understanding it places Erostepost correctly. SALZ carries the documentary and regional brief — the Nahaufnahmen issues presenting current work from the Salzburg region, the Rauris issue, the long archive — while Erostepost carries the scouting brief, looking outward across the German-language world for the writers who have not yet had their books.

For Salzburg's literary culture the combination is valuable. A young writer in the province can aim first at Erostepost's pages or its prize, graduate to the documentary record of SALZ, and appear at readings in the same building throughout. A reader of both magazines receives, twice and four times a year respectively, a Salzburg-edited survey of new literature at two different focal lengths. Few Austrian cities sustain even one literary magazine for four decades; Salzburg sustains two, both association-run, both housed in its literature house, and Erostepost is the younger, prize-bearing, talent-seeking half of that pair.

Place in Austrian literary life

General accounts of Austrian literature list Erostepost among the country's traditional and important literary magazines — named, in the standard survey, alongside Literatur und Kritik in its own city, manuskripte, Sterz, Schreibkraft and Lichtungen in Graz, Wespennest and Kolik in Vienna, Cognac & Biskotten in Innsbruck and DUM in Lower Austria. That listing, repeated across reference works, is the formal recognition of the magazine's standing. Within the group in this batch of Austrian titles, Erostepost shares Salzburg with SALZ, shares the association form with Podium and Kolik, and shares the semiannual rhythm with Schreibkraft and the later Podium — while remaining the only title in the group whose annual prize is so fully documented and so central to its identity.

Its longevity completes the picture. Founded in 1987, Erostepost has outlived many better-resourced Austrian periodicals and has now published across five decades of calendar time, from the late Cold War Salzburg of its founding to the present. Literary magazines of its kind rarely announce themselves loudly; their work accumulates in early publications, in prize lists, in the CVs of writers who passed through their pages at the moment when a first Salzburg publication and a first Salzburg prize could change a career's direction. Erostepost's documented record — Röggla in 1990, Balàka in 1993, Haslinger, Winkler and Lotz among its prize winners — shows that quiet work being done, verifiably, for nearly forty years.

Reading Erostepost today

For a reader coming to Erostepost now, the practical facts are these. It is a German-language literary magazine from Salzburg, published twice a year by the Verein Erostepost at the Literaturhaus Salzburg, with its website at erostepost.at, where the current issue, the association and the Erostepost-Literaturpreis are presented. Its natural readership is the readership of Austrian literary magazines generally — writers, critics, teachers and committed readers of new German-language writing — with the addition of the many writers who follow its annual prize as a possible first honour. A reader who takes up a current issue should expect the promotion brief in action: younger German-language authors in the foreground, in the company of the Salzburg literary world that the literature house convenes around the magazine.

For a young writer, Erostepost holds a particular place in the Austrian order of first steps. A text accepted by a Salzburg association magazine, or a prize awarded by its jury, is a verifiable early credential — the kind that appears, exactly as documented in this profile for Röggla, Balàka and Balàka's fellow prize-winner Haslinger before them, at the head of a bibliography that later grows long. That is why the magazine's twice-yearly rhythm should not be mistaken for a minor presence: in the economy of literary beginnings, two well-judged issues and one well-judged prize a year can matter more than a larger magazine's volume.

The record and its limits

An honest closing note is required, because the Erostepost record in summary sources is thinner than its importance would suggest. Documented securely are: publication since 1987 in Salzburg by the Verein Erostepost at the Literaturhaus Salzburg; semiannual frequency; the annual Erostepost-Literaturpreis with winners documented from 1989 to 2024, including the themed years 2018 and 2021 and the acknowledgement-honorarium year 2015; the sample of early contributors with their issue numbers; membership in the Dachverband Salzburger Kulturstätten; the website erostepost.at; and the ZDB record 2250077-7. Not documented in the summary sources are a verified circulation, a complete contents index, the names of the magazine's editors across its history, and the prize's endowment in euros — and this profile asserts none of them.

Within those limits the assessment stands. Erostepost is a Salzburg literary magazine of the promotion type: association-published at the literature house since 1987, semiannual, prize-awarding, and demonstrably early to writers who later mattered. Together with SALZ it makes Salzburg, after Graz and alongside Vienna, one of the three cities on which Austria's literary-magazine system rests — and its prize list alone, from Josef Haslinger to Wolfram Lotz to the winners of 2024, earns it a permanent footnote in the history of contemporary German-language literature.