Monika Rinck was born in Zweibrücken in 1969. She studied religious studies, history and comparative linguistics at the University of Bochum, Berlin’s Free University, and Yale University. She has published collections of poems, essays, as well as a book of poems, drawings and prose. She has received the Ernst Meister Poetry Award 2008 and Arno Reinfrank Poetry Award 2009. She cooperates with composers and musicians and teaches poetry at the Deutsche Literatur Institut in Leipzig.