Jenny Erpenbeck
Jenny Erpenbeck (born 12 March 1967) is a German writer and opera director, recipient of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Life. Born in East Berlin, Erpenbeck is the daughter of the physicist, philosopher and writer John Erpenbeck and the Arabic translator Doris Kilias. Her grandparents are the authors Fritz Erpenbeck and Hedda Zinner. In Berlin she attended an Advanced High School, where she graduated in 1985. She then completed a two-year apprenticeship as a bookbinder before working at several theaters as props and wardrobe supervisor. From 1988 to 1990 Erpenbeck studied theatre at the Humboldt University of  Berlin. In 1990 she changed her studies to Music Theater Director (studying with, among others, Ruth Berghaus, Heiner Müller and Peter Konwitschny) at the Hanns Eisler Music Conservatory. After the successful completion of her studies in 1994, with a production of Béla Bartók's opera "Duke Bluebeard's Castle" in her parish church and in the Kunsthaus Tacheles, she spent some time at first as an assistant director at the opera house in Graz, where in 1997 she did her own productions of Schoenberg's "Erwartung", Bartók's "Duke Bluebeard's Castle" and a world premiere of her own piece  Cats Have Seven Lives. As a freelance director, she directed in 1998 different opera houses in Germany and Austria, including Monteverdi's "L'Orfeo" in Aachen, "Acis and Galatea" at the Berlin State Opera and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "Zaide" in Nuremberg/Erlangen. In the 1990s Erpenbeck started a writing career in addition to her directing. She is author of narrative prose and plays: her debut novella in 1999, "Geschichte vom alten Kind" ("The Old Child"); in 2001, her collection of stories "Tand" ("Trinkets"); in 2004, the novella "Wörterbuch" ("The Book of Words"); and in 2008, the novel "Heimsuchung" ("Visitation"). In  2007, Erpenbeck took over a biweekly column by Nicole Krauss in the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung". In 2015 the English translation of her novel "Aller Tage Abend" ("The End of Days") won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Erpenbeck's works have been translated into Danish, English, French, Greek, Hebrew, Dutch, Swedish, Slovene, Spanish, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Arabic, Estonian and Finnish. Erpenbeck lives in Berlin with her husband, conductor , and her son.