Sibylle Berg

Sibylle Berg (born 2 June 1962 ) is a German-Swiss contemporary author and playwright.

They write novels, essays, short fiction, plays, radio plays, and columns.

Their 16 books have been translated into 30 languages.

They have won numerous awards, including the Thüringer Literaturpreis, the Bertolt-Brecht-Literaturpreis, and the Johann-Peter-Hebel-Preis.

They have become an iconic figure in German alternative sub-cultures, gaining a large fan base among the LGBT community and the European artistic communities.

They live in Switzerland and Israel.

Berg was born on 2 June 1962 in Weimar, East Germany.

She spent her childhood and youth in Constanta, Romania.

Her father was a music professor, and her mother was a librarian.

Before beginning her higher education in West Germany, she was trained as a combat diver.

She studied oceanography at the University of Hamburg, and worked various jobs.

In 1996, she moved to Zurich, Switzerland.

Berg's first novel, A Few People Search for Happiness and Laugh Themselves to Death, was published in 1997 by Reclam Publishing, after previously being rejected by 50 other publishers.

, Berg has written 16 novels.

In 2000, in Bochum, their second play Helges Leben (Helge's Life) was staged and commissioned for the Mulheim Theater Festival.

She married in 2004, and has held Swiss citizenship since 2012.

Berg is known to support the Straight Edge movement.

Berg describes herself as Non-Binary.

In 2023 an article in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung put big parts of Berg's biographical details into question.

On 25 September 2023 it was announced that Berg will be competing in the election for the European Parliament in June 2024 for Die PARTEI.

In 2008, the play Von denen die überleben (Of Those Who Survive) was staged in the central theater of Zurich, in collaboration with well-known artists such as Jon Pylypchuk, Gabríela Friðriksdóttir, and more.

They have also been a columnist for Spiegel Online since January 2011, under the title "S.P.O.N. – Fragen Sie Frau Sibylle" (Ask Ms. Sibylle), published weekly until March 2018, and bi-weekly since then.

The column has more than 4 million followers.

To promote their newly released books, Berg goes on tour, with the 2012 release of Vielen Dank für das Leben (Thank You For This Life) including contributions from film and theater actors Katia Riemann, Mathias Brandt, and musician Mary Ocher, and the release of GRM: brainfuck featured the grime rappers T.Roadz, and Prince Rapid and Slix of Ruff Sqwad.

Berg has written 30 plays.

In 2013, Berg began working with Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin, and their first play, Es sagt mir nichts, das sogenannte Draussen (The so-called outside means nothing to me), was selected in 2014 as the play of the year by Theater heute.

In 2015, the play Und dann kam Mirna (And Then Came Mirna) won the Friedrich Luft Prize as the best production in Berlin and Potsdam.

They support the Charter of Digital Fundamental Rights of the European Union, published at the end of November 2016, and is a regular guest at the Re:publica conference.

Berg has written various contributions for Die Zeit, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, and Die Presse, among others.

In 2018, they launched a referendum against insurance companies monitoring individual insurers without the requirement for a court order.

They support the referendum E-ID, against privatization of a digital passport project into private businesses.

Their 2019 work GRM. Brainfuck, a science fiction novel set in a dystopian near future won the Swiss Book Prize and was noticed by The Washington Post, and reached fourth place on the Spiegel Bestseller list, with the sequel, RCE, entering the list as highest entry of the week at place 14.

On 1 March 2023 Berg was invited as special guest to open the high-profile Elevate Festival in Graz.

In 2019, the play Wonderland Ave was invited to the "Mülheim Theatertage".

In 2019, the play Hate Triptych – Ways out of the crisis (Hass-Triptychon – Wege aus der Krise) won the Nestroypreis as the best play of the year in German-speaking countries.

Berg's plays have been staged and aired in the United States, Britain, Italy, France, Spain, Poland, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Hungary, Turkey, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Romania, and Bulgaria.

Berg has long been a social activist.

In 2019, in response to man-dominated historiography, together with other women and non-binary people, they published The Canon for the Visibility of Women in Science Art and Literature.

Berg is active in science education.

Their interviews with experts in various disciplines were published in the Swiss magazine Republik, and then in book form under the title Nerds retten die Welt ("Nerds save the world").