Yoko Tawada was born in Tokyo (Japan) in 1960. From 1982 to 2006 she lived in Hamburg. Since 2006, she has been living in Berlin. Tawada studied Literary Studies in Tokyo, Hamburg, and Zurich. She wrote her dissertation under the supervision of Sigrid Weigel. She has been a Member of the German Academy for Language and Literature since 2012. Tawada writes in German and Japanese. She received numerous awards and stipends, among them, the Akutagawa Prize 1993, the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize 1996, the Tanizaki Prize 2003, the Goethe Medal 2005, a Guest Lectureship on Intercultural Poetics at the University of Hamburg 2011, the Yomiuri Prize for Literature 2013, the DAAD Chair in Contemporary Poetics at New York University 2015, and the Kleist Prize 2016. Her most recent publications are »Ein Balkonplatz für flüchtige Abende« (2016) and »akzentfrei« (2016).