Katja Lange-Müller

2005 Max Kade Writer-in-residence

Katja Lange-Müller was born in 1951 in East Berlin, where, because of her oppositional attitude, she was prevented from continuing her education and trained as a typesetter. She also worked as an art therapist and nurse's aid in psychiatric institutions. In 1984, she was able to move to West Berlin, where she pursued her writing. She published her first book, Wehleid - wie im Leben, in 1986 and was awarded the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize the same year.

Since then she has published the following works:

Kaspar Mauser - Die Feigheit vorm Freund (1988)
Verfrühte Tierliebe (1995)
Die Letzten: Aufzeichnungen aus Udo Posbichs Druckerei (2000)
Die Enten, die Frauen und die Wahrheit: Erzählungen und Miniaturen (2003)

Her writing is concerned with the outsider, the lonely, the old, and other socially marginal people. Her style is noteworthy for its whimsical and surrealistic humor.

In addition to the Ingeborg Bachmann prize, Katja Lange-Müller has received numerous other prizes, including the Alfred Döblin Prize (1995), the Berliner Literaturpreis (1996), the Literaturpreis der Stadt Mainz (2002), and the Roswitha von Gandersheim-Literaturpreis (2002). In 2002 she became a member of the Academy of the Arts in Berlin and in 2004, she was Turmschreiberin der Stadt Beeskow.

Ms. Lange-Müller has been a guest author in the United States several times - at MIT, Dartmouth College, and New York University Deutsches Haus. She has also taught at the prestigious Deutsches Literaturinstitut in Leipzig, the only institution in Germany to offer a creative writing program.