Sarah Kirsch Author

Sarah Kirsch was born Ingrid Bernstein in 1935 in the East German region of the Harz Mountains, Prussian Saxony. She later changed her first name in order to protest against her father's anti-Semitism. During the 1960s Kirsch studied biology and literature at the universities of Halle and Leipzig and married the poet Rainer Kirsch, from whom she later separated. She published her first poetry collection, Landpartie (Country Outing), in 1967 and went on to publish numerous others. She was openly critical of the East German socialist regime, which led to her exclusion in 1976 from the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). One year later she left East Germany. Her work has been translated into many languages, including Japanese. Kirsch is also an acclaimed prose-writer and a translator of children's books into German. In 1976 she was awarded the German international literary Petrarca-Preis prize. Anne Stokes holds a PhD in German Literature from Ohio State University. She teaches Translation at the University of Stirling and translates from German.