Born in Karlsruhe in 1973, she was educated in Frankfurt, Leipzig, and Paris.
She is best known for her debut novel Die Stunde zwischen Hund und Wolf (The Hour Between Dog and Wolf), which has been translated into ten languages including English.
She has won numerous German and European literary prizes and fellowships, including the Georg-Christoph-Lichtenberg-Preis, the Leonce-und-Lena-Preis, the Hölty Prize, the Bertolt-Brecht-Literaturpreis, and a Villa Massimo fellowship.