Ulrike Draesner, born in Munich in 1962, lives in Berlin and Leipzig. She writes novels, short stories, essays and poems and is interested in natural sciences as well as cultural debates. Ulrike Draesner has received several awards for her novels and poems, including the Bavarian Book Prize, the German Prize for Nature Writing, the LiteraTour Nord Prize, the Ida Dehmel Literature Prize (all 2020), the Gertrud Kolmar Prize (2019) and the Nicolas Born Prize (2016). From 2015 to 2017 she taught at Oxford University, and since April 2018 she has been a professor at the German Literature Institute, Leipzig. Her Selected Poems are appearing in German in January 2022, and her most recent novel, Schwitters — about the expatriate German artist — was published in 2020.

"Ulrike Draesner is one of the most important contemporary German writers. As a novelist, poet, essayist and translator — her translations of Nobel Prize winner Louise Glück into German are particularly noteworthy — she has won widespread acclaim." Times Literary Supplement