Manja Präkels

Manja Präkels, born in 1974, is an author and musician. She lives in Berlin and Brandenburg, where she documented the many upheavals of the 1990s as a reporter. Her debut novel Als ich mit Hitler Schnapskirschen aß was published in 2017 and won awards including the German Youth Literature Prize and the 2018 Anna Seghers Prize from the Academy of Arts, Berlin. She conducts writing workshops in schools and forms alliances with neighbours at Mehringplatz in Kreuzberg. In 2022, Welt im Widerhall oder war das eine Plastiktüte? was published, a collection of essays from her ongoing observations of East German life in transition. In 2025, Extremwetterlagen, a collection of literary reportages from the East German provinces, will be published. As part of the HKW publication series 'haɪ̯maːtn̩, she published the literary reportage Breathing Against the Wind in 2025.