Nico Bleutge was born in Munich (Germany) in 1972 and today lives in Berlin. He has received numerous awards for his literary work, such as the Erich-Fried Prize (2012), the Christian-Wagner Prize (2014), or the Eichendorff Prize for Literature (2015), but also the Alfred-Kerr Prize for Literary Criticism (2016). He also took various residencies, such as the Casa Baldi Stipendium at the German Academy in Rome (2015) as well as at the Cultural Academy Tarabya in Istanbul, Turkey (2014/16). Nico Bleutge has authored four innovative and stylistically rich volumes of poetry as well as the opera libretto “Wasser” (premiered in 2012). Another hallmark of Bleutgeˈs work is his fascinating and prolific literary criticism which has been featured in major German, Austrian, and Swiss newspapers. He is a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts.