Peter Wawerzinek

Peter Wawerzinek was born in 1954 in Rostock, in East Germany. His parents escaped from East Germany shortly after his birth leaving him behind. He grew up in the north of East Germany near the coast of the Baltic Sea and was adopted after some years in children's homes.
He moved to East Berlin in 1978 where he studied art (without completing a degree), worked a various jobs including gravedigger and carpenter. In the 1980s he was a performance artist and poet. As of 2010 he lives in Berlin. He won the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in 2010 for his excerpt Ich finde dich (I'll Find You) of his novel Rabenliebe (Bad Love, literally: Ravens' Love) which was also on the short-list of the 2010 German Book Prize. Wawerzinek has received numerous grants, among them the author's grant from the German Academy Rome Villa Massimo 2019.