Roman Hocke
Born in 1953, Roman Hocke had a goal in life is to tell good stories. In order to promote them and to bring them closer to the reader, he decided to break camp in his home city of Rome where he began in 1981 – after studying German and Italian literature in Zurich, Rome and Munich – to start work as an editor at the Stuttgart Weitbrech publishing house. In the 17 years he was there, he helped publish over 250 books, acting both as publishing house director and CEO. He published numerous works from the fantasy genre, among which included the thirty-volume library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges. He also worked for 15 years as Michael Ende’s editor. Since the writer’s death, Roman Hocke has supervised the literary inheritance of the great storyteller as his publisher. In order to make good stories more available to an even broader public, Roman Hocke became an independent literary agent in 1997 with his Rome and Munich-based project agency. In 2002 he entered a synergetic relationship with the AVA GmbH by Reinhold G. Stecher. From that point forward his literary agency has been run under the name AVA international GmbH. For years Roman Hocke has fought for the fantastic arts. He is a member of the board of Labyrinthe, Society for Fantastic and Visionary Arts e.V. in Munich (www.labyrinthe.com), which creates exhibits about this art form. He is also an honorary member of the Bruno Weber foundation attributed to the Swiss artist. His interest in all things fantastic runs in the family: His father Gustav René Hocke wrote Die Welt als Labyrinth, a classic work about modern mannerism research that illustrates the development of the fantastic over the centuries. Roman Hocke has written numerous publications about the fantastic arts as well as those about the artists and authors. Among other things, he wrote a biography about the life and work of Michael Ende. Roman Hocke lives with his wife Andrea in Genzano di Roma, a tiny town on the Via Appia in the Alban hills about 30 kilometers south of Rome.