ilb Jahre: 2006
Yanick Lahens
Yanick Lahens was born in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince in 1953. She received her higher education in Paris, also studying Literature at the Sorbonne. After completing her studies she returned to Haiti and taught at the state-run Ecole Normale Supérieure until 1995. She later worked for the Ministry of Culture.
Yasmina Khadra
Yasmina Khadra was born Mohammed Moulessehoul in Kenadsa, in the Algerian Sahara, in 1955. Like his father, an officer in the Algerian army, he was also meant to become a member of the military and was sent to a cadet training school. He wrote his first volume of short stories,
Wolfgang Ernst
Wolfgang Ernst, born in 1959, studied History and Ancient Philology at universities in Cologne, London and Bochum. After receiving his doctorate he held several guest lectureships in Media History, Theory and Aesthetics at Kassel, Bochum and Weimar amongst others. In 2001 he was promoted to professor at the Humboldt University
Wei Hui
Wei Hui was born in 1973 in Ningbo near Shanghai. In 1990 she was among the first students compelled to complete a full year of compulsory training at a military school, following the student unrests. It was at this time that she began to write. Wei Hui studied Chinese Language
Viktor Jerofejew
Viktor Yerofeyev was born in Moscow in 1947. His father was an interpreter for Vyacheslav Molotov, among others, and was also the Soviet ambassador in France. Yerofeyev studied philology and linguistics at Lomonsov University in Moscow and received his doctorate on Dostoyevsky and French existentialism. In 1979, he collaborated on
Vikram Seth
Vikram Seth was born in Calcutta in 1952 and grew up in India and London. His mother was the first female Chief of Justice of a state High Court and also enjoyed success as a writer with her autobiography. After completing his studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford,
Vesna Aleksić
Vesna Aleksić was born in 1958 in a small Serbian town close to Belgrade, which she remembers as being a lively place full of children, carriages and steam trains, and which was formative for her writing. After completing her studies she became a school psychologist, and today works as an
Vikram Chandra
Vikram Chandra was born in New Delhi in 1961. He is from a family where writing and Indian film in particular are a real influence; his mother wrote screenplays and dramas, his sisters work as a director and as a film critic. After leaving school, while Chandra was venturing into
Valérie Dayre
Valérie Dayre was born in France in 1958. In 1989 she published her first book, entitled »Miranda s’en va« (t: Miranda goes away). Since then she has written over fifteen highly-acclaimed children’s novels and picture books, which have been translated into German, Spanish, Italian and Dutch. In her challenging stories,
Ursula Krechel
Ursula Krechel, born in Trier in 1947, worked for West German radio and newspapers while still studying German Language and Literature, Theatre and Art History. She worked as a playwright for the local theatre in Dortmund and led various theatre projects with young prison inmates before finishing her doctorate at
Uljana Wolf
Uljana Wolf was born in Berlin in 1979. She emerged early as a poet, even before taking up studies in German and English Literature at the Humboldt University in Berlin: she won the Fourth Berlin Young Writers’ Literature Competition in 1995. She has published many poems in anthologies and journals
