Sibylle Berg was born at and spent her childhood in Weimar where she also worked as a puppeteer until moving to the West in 1984. She studied briefly at the Dimitri theatre school in Ticino and then had various jobs. She began to write, published her first articles and reportage, and was a columnist for the "Zeit-Magazin". Her first book appeared in 1997, and other novels and stories followed. She has published several books, e.g.
Gold, 2000,
Das Unerfreuliche zuerst – Herrengeschichten, 2001,
Ende gut, 2004 and
Habe ich dir eigentlich schon erzählt… (2006). Rights of her books have been sold to Korea Italy and Greece (Topos books).
Helges Leben was her first play to be staged for the theater. Since then her plays are being staged by numerous theatres at home and abroad (translated into ten languages), and her latest play, the musical
Wünsch dir was, was premièred by the Schauspielhaus Zürich. She is a regular contributor to the
Tempo,
Die Zeit,
Das Magazin (Zürich) and
Allegra (Hamburg) reviews. She lives in Zürich.
Her novel
Sex II was published by Topos Books in 2007.
Her latest novel is
Die Fahrt (
The Journey) Kiepenheuer und Witsch, Köln, August 2007.
The writer has created a very original site written in german (and french). You may find it
here. The above photos were taken in Salonica at the International Book Fair (May 2009), where Sibylle Berg was officially invited as one of Germany's representative writers.
Portrait photo by: Katharina Lütscher for Allegra