Natascha Wodin was born in 1945 in Fürth, Bavaria, the child of Ukrainian forced labourers. She grew up in a camp for Displaced Persons (DPs) and at the age of ten was placed in a children’s home after her mother’s suicide.
Growing up with both German and Russian, she became a translator and interpreter and started writing professionally in 1981. She was married to fellow writer Wolfgang Hilbig, and has lived in Berlin and Mecklenburg since 1984.. She has written novels, short stories and poetry, often about the experience of being a foreigner and of being homeless and rootless.
Natascha Wodin has won numerous prestigious prizes for her work, including the Adalbert-von- Chamisso Prize in 1998, the Brüder- Grimm Prize in 1989 and 2009, the Alfred-Döblin Prize in 2015, and the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in 2017 for Sie kam aus Mariupol. Her most recent book, Irgendwo in diesem Dunkel, is a memoir of her father. (2019)
Winter 2022 (Issue 17), Nastja’s Tears
Winter 2019 (Issue 14), Displaced Persons