Kathrin Schmidt
A multi-award-winning poet and novelist, Kathrin Schmidt’s voice is distinctly of East Germany, where she was raised.
Her German Book Prize-winning novel You’re not dying (2009) was translated into thirteen languages and will at last be published in English in 2021, along with her short story collection It’s over. Don’t go there.
Schmidt won amongst other awards the Leonce-und-Lena Preis (1993) for her poetry, in which she employs tongue-twisting alliteration and assonance and playfully moves consonants, Jandl-style, to release unexpected meanings. Invented words and puns also appear in Schmidt’s prose. Both her poetry and prose revisit themes of gender, identity, and the body, and engage with contemporary politics from a critical feminist and anti-capitalist stance. (2020)
Winter 2020 (Issue 15), Balder & Sons
Winter 2018 (Issue 13), stagnant
Winter 2018 (Issue 13), flourmouthed