Sway to stay

Thekla Wilkening

Thekla Wilkening merges the personal with the political, the everyday with the systemic - crafting literature that resonates long after the last page.

She is an entrepreneur, author, and FINTA* policy spokesperson for Bündnis 90/Die Grünen in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. For years, she has been a passionate advocate for mindful living, the circular economy, and social participation - always with an eye for the larger systems shaping our everyday lives. As co-founder of Kleiderei, Germanys first fashion sharing label, she became a pioneer of sustainable fashion in the German-speaking world, advising companies and pushing the public discourse forward.

After co-authoring the nonfiction book The Organic Pizza Dilemma with public health expert Robin Haring, Wilkening now turns to fiction. In summer 2025, her literary debut SWAY TO STAY: Franca and Ed will be published, a novel about intimacy and rupture, queerness and care, survival and truth. With this work, she gives her political and personal commitment a narrative form: empathetic, radical, and quietly defiant. It is a story that calls for more understanding, for ourselves, for one another and for new narratives of belonging and community.

Her personal story is deeply intertwined with her work. As the mother of a daughter with Down syndrome, she is a public advocate for inclusion, visibility, and self-determination, themes that also flow through her writing. Her essays have been published in VOGUE, Die Welt, and other leading outlets. Every week, she writes about life between conviction and vulnerability on her Substack "Von Hybris und Weltschmerz."

Her creative sensibility is also rooted in family legacy: her grandfather Albert Wilkening was a central figure in the East German film industry and later chief director of the Babelsberg Film Studios. Her father, Thomas Wilkening, continued this cinematic tradition. Storytelling, for Thekla, has always been about relevance, humanity, and stance.

With "SWAY TO STAY: Franca and Ed", the first volume of the "SWAY TO STAY" series - Thekla Wilkening steps into the literary spotlight.

Website: https://www.theklawilkening.de