Kathrin Schmidt

Kathrin Schmidt studied at University of Jena and German Institute for Literature. The recorded working language is German. The field of work recorded is poetry. Places of work recorded in the authority are Berlin. Residence is recorded at Mahlsdorf. Distinctions recorded are German Book Prize, Villa Massimo, Droste-Preis and Thüringer Literaturpreis.

Kathrin Schmidt grew up in Gotha and from 1964 in Waltershausen. After graduating from high school, she studied psychology at the University of Jena from 1976 to 1981. After completing her studies (diploma), she worked as a research assistant at the University of Leipzig from 1981 to 1982, and then as a child psychologist at the Rüdersdorf District Hospital and at the Berlin-Marzahn Child and Youth Health Protection Center. In 1986/1987, she completed special studies at the Johannes R. Becher Institute of Literature in Leipzig. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, she worked at the Round Table in East Berlin. In 1990/1991 she was editor of the feminist women's magazine Ypsilon and worked as a research assistant at the Berlin Institute for Comparative Social Research until 1993. She has been a freelance writer since 1994. She is a member of the PEN Center Germany. Kathrin Schmidt began writing as a teenager and initially published poetry. The poems are characterized by strict metre, powerful, sensual language and frequent use of puns. The novels, sometimes classified as magical realism due to the baroque fullness of the stories, also show Kathrin Schmidt as a powerful author with an exuberant imagination, who has been compared by critics to the early Günter Grass and Irmtraud Morgner. To date, her greatest literary success is the autobiographically tinged novel Du stirbst nicht. In it, the author describes the illness and recovery story of the writer Helene, who is confronted with the lack of control over her body after a stroke and must relearn language. The book sold 150,000 copies and was awarded the German Book Prize in 2009. Kathrin Schmidt raised five children with her husband and lives in Berlin-Mahlsdorf.

• The Gunnar Lennefsen Expedition. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1998,. • Koenig's Children. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2002,. • Seebach's Black Cats. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2005,. • You Don't Die. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2009,. • Kapok's Sisters. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2016,.

• Sticky ends. Science fiction novella. Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 2000,. • Three carp blue. Short prose. Berliner Handpresse, Berlin 2000. • Finito. Schwamm drüber. Short stories. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2011,. • Tiefer Schafsee and other stories. With three color etchings by Madeleine Heublein. Leipzig Bibliophile Evening 2016.

• Poetry Seminar 1989. 1990. • Yearbook of Poetry 2011, with Christoph Buchwald. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2011.