Sarah Jäger, Germany


Sarah Jäger was born in 1979 in Paderborn and lives today in the Ruhr valley. After earning her Abitur she worked in a call centre and as a freelance theatre pedagogue, before training to be a bookseller. Parallel to this she wrote her novel “Forwards, southwards”, which debuted in 2020. In her three novels to date, Sarah Jäger has brought a new voice to German youth literature. She continues to work part-time in a bookstore in Essen, in order to find enough time for her writing.

The rear courtyard of a discount supermarket in “Forwards, southwards”, a petrol station in the middle of nowhere in “Platypus deluxe”: Sarah Jäger’s novels are set in unusual places and focussed on youthful protagonists from quite different backgrounds. For her authentic and true-to-life narratives about growing up she has been awarded a variety of prizes, including the Luchs of the month in March 2020 and the Kranichstein Youth Literature Fellowship 2021 for “Forwards, southwards”. In 2022 she was nominated for the German Youth Literature Award.


The events with Sarah Jäger are moderated by Franz Lettner, a literary critic and researcher at the Institute for Youth Literature in Vienna.
 

To “Forwards, southwards” and “Platypus deluxe” from Sarah Jäger

© photo: Anna-Lisa Konrad