European Poetry Festival: Michelle Steinbeck

Michelle Steinbeck is a Swiss author, curator and editor. She writes stories, poetry and plays; columns and reportages. Her first novel My Father was a Man on Land and a Whale in the Water was published in 2016 at the publishing house Lenos in Basel. It was nominated for the Swiss and the German Book prize, while one critic on TV called it «disgusting and terrible». The English translation came out in the autumn of 2018 at Darf Publishers in London, the Italian follows this spring 2019. A collection of poetry Eingesperrte Vögel singen mehr (Birds in a cage sing more) was published in 2018 at Voland&Quist in Dresden. Steinbeck organises literary events for young writers and is the editor-in-chief of the Zurich-based magazine Fabrikzeitung (fabrikzeitung.ch). This year she will be living in Basel, Paris, Tuscany and Hamburg. She appeared at the Swiss Cabaret of Prose and Poetry at the British Library, London, in December 2018.

Michelle Steinbeck is one of six of Switzerland’s most remarkable contemporary poets taking part in the European Poetry Festival to celebrate Swiss poetry and potential of collaboration in literature.