Gertrud Leutenegger, born in 1948 in Schwyz, is a Swiss novelist, playwright, poet, and short story writer who has been active since 1975, and has published approximately 17 works, 10 of them novels.
She received the Ingeborg Bachmann Jury Prize in 1978. In 2014 Leutenegger’s novel Panischer Frühling was shortlisted for both the Swiss Book Prize and the German Book Prize, and awarded the Roswitha Prize for that year. This book tells the story of a woman stranded in London when the eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull n 2010 brought all air-traffic to a sudden halt.
In 2021, Gertrud Leutenegger received an award of recognition from the Canton of Zurich, where she now lives, having earlier spent many years living in the Italian-speaking Canton Ticino, where her 2020 novel Späte Gäste (Late Guests) is set. (2022)