Judith Hermann

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Judith Hermann (2007)

Judith Hermann (born May 15, 1970) is a German author.

Herman was born in West Berlin in the St. Joseph hospital. She grew up in the West Berlin neighborhood of Neukölln and remained there until the mid-nineties, when she moved to the district of Prenzlauer Berg in the former East Berlin.

She holds a Masters degree in German and Philosophy and attended the Berliner Journalistenschule, a highly selective professional academy for journalists. During this training she did an internship with the German language newspaper Aufbau in New York. While she was in America she worked on some of her first literary texts, and realized that short stories were "her" genre.

After returning to Berlin, she worked briefly as a free-lance journalist before she was awarded the Alfred-Döblin stipend from the Berliner Akademie der Künste (Berlin Academy of Arts) in 1997. Recipients of this stipend are financed for three to twelve months while they live and work in the Alfred-Döblin House in Wewelsfleth.

In 1998 her first volume of short stories, called Sommerhaus, später was published, and well received by critics. From her work came the "sound of a new generation" and a "female wonder" (Spiegel 12/1999). She received both the Hugo Ball Prize and the Bremer Literatur-Förderpreis. In 2001 she was awarded the Kleist Prize.

This was followed up in 2003 by her second collection of stories Nichts als Gespenster.