Mirjam Pressler was born in Darmstadt in 1940. After studying at the Fine Arts Academy in Frankfurt and studying languages in Munich, she lived on a kibbutz in Israel for a year. In the 1970s, while working in an office, she began writing books for children and teens in her spare time. Her first book, "Bitterschokolade", was published in 1980. Since then she has written more than 30 books for young readers and translated more than 200 books from Dutch, Flemish, Hebrew, English and Afrikanns into German.
Mirjam Pressler has won many awards. Her complete works as a translator were recognised with a special award on the occasion of the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 1994. She won the Grand Prize of the German Academy for Literature for Children and Young Adults in 2001, the German Book Award in 2004 and a special award on the occasion of the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 2010 for her complete works.
Mirjam Pressler now lives in Munich and works as an author and translator.
