Half Swimmer

Katja Oskamp was born in 1970 in Leipzig and grew up in Berlin. Her debut collection of stories Halbschwimmer was published in 2003. In 2007 she published her first novel Die Staubfängerin. Her book Marzahn, Mon Amour, published by Hanser with the subtitle ‘Stories of a Chiropodist’, was selected for the ‘Berlin Reads One Book’ campaign and thus literally became the talk of the town. The English translation of Marzahn, Mon Amour, published by Peirene Press in 2022, was awarded the 2023 Dublin Literary Award.

Jo Heinrich found her ideal career in her middle years, and graduated in 2018 with an MA in Translation from the University of Bristol. She was shortlisted for the 2020 Austrian Cultural Forum London Translation Prize and the 2019 John Dryden Translation Competition and won the Dublin Literary Award 2023 for her translation of Marzahn, Mon Amour. She translates from French and German, and she lives just outside Bristol with her family.