Ulrike Draesner

Born 1962 in Munich/Germany.

Ulrike Draesner lives in Berlin/Germany and Oxford/Great Britain. She is a German poet, a writer of long and short fiction and a translator of French and Anglo-American poetry. She studied English literature, philosophy and German literature in Munich and Oxford (St. John’s College, Balliol College) and was awarded her PhD in 1992.

Apart from numerous appearances in anthologies and magazines, she has published five poetry collections (most recent: subsong 2014), two collections of short stories (Richtig liegen 2011), and five novels. The last one, her ground-breaking novel Sieben Sprünge vom Rand der Welt was published in 2014 and a celebrated success. It develops a chorus of voices telling about the consequences of forced migration in Middle and Eastern Europe from 1939 up to today.

Ulrike Draesner also works as an author of essays on media and cultural change. In 2007 she published a collection of essays on writing and reading Schöne Frauen lesen, which was followed in 2013 by a second collection, focussing on the concept of heroism in male writers’ lives and fictions (Heimliche Helden). Her collections Mein Hiddensee and London (will be published in the fall of 2016 by Insel Verlag) explore the possibilities of nature and space writing.

Ulrike Draesner’s multimedia collaborations include a space poem for Hong Kong and Calcutta, participation in various internet projects (SMS and video experiments) as well as close collaborations with musicians (Libretto Tre Volti 2017). She has been awarded poetic readerships at Middlebury College in Middlebury, VT/USA, the University of Oxford, Great Britain, the Universities of Kiel/Germany, Birmingham/Great Britain, Mainz/Germany and Bamberg/Germany, which were published as Zauber im Zoo (Magic in the Zoo) in spring 2007, and sometimes teaches as a professor for Creative Writing at the Deutsche Literaturinstitut Leipzig, Germany.

For her poetry and prose she received various scholarships (Literarisches Colloquium Berlin, Akademie Schloss Solitude, Künstlerhaus Edenkoben, Passa Porta Brussels, among others) and literary awards, most recently the Joachim-Ringelnatz-Preis for poetry 2014, the Roswithapreis 2013 and the Literaturpreis Solothurn 2010.