Zoë Jenny

Zoë Jenny (born March 16, 1974 in Basel ) is a Swiss writer .

Life

Zoë Jenny was born in Basel in 1974 as the daughter of the publisher Matthyas Jenny and the painter Rahel Knöll. When she was three years old, the parents divorced. Jenny and her brother Caspar Jenny , who is now a poet and painter, grew up with their father in Basel, Greece and Carona in the canton of Ticino . From 1982 to 1984 she attended the reform-pedagogical Freie Volksschule Basel . Already as a schoolgirl she became active as a writer and from 1993 published various short stories, short stories and essays in literary magazines in German-speaking countries. In 1994 Jenny graduated from the secondary school in Basel.

In 1997 Jenny's first novel The Pollen Room was published , which achieved bestselling status and has been translated into 27 languages. She went on extensive lecture tours to the United States, China and Japan; At times she lived in New York and Berlin. In 1999 the novel The Call of the Shell Horn was published . The children's book Mittelpünktchens Reise um die Welt followed in 2000 . In the same year, the novel A Fast Life , a modern adaptation of the Romeo and Juliet theme, was published. In 2002 Zoë Jenny was a judge at the Locarno International Film Festival . She was a columnist for Die Zeit , the Financial Times and Schweizer Illustrierte .

In 2004 Jenny moved to London. In 2007 her artist novel Das Portrait was published . In 2008 she married the Briton Matthew Homfray, and their daughter was born in January 2010. The novel The Sky is Changing , written in English, followed in 2010 . In 2013 the volume of short stories appeared tomorrow at the latest. A year after their marriage ended in divorce in 2012, Jenny moved to Zurich. In January 2015 she moved to Vienna .

Also based on her own childhood experiences, she was severely judged in an article published in the newspaper Die Welt in 2013 with the reform pedagogy and alternative scene of the 1980s. Referring to the pedophile debate of the Greens , she criticized the learning resistance of (as she calls them) “do-gooders”: “In the left-green communities of the 1970s and 1980s, children lived in a highly dangerous way. Above all, the adults felt free, who exceeded all boundaries in a misunderstood liberalism. "

Jenny was an ambassador for the Swiss children and youth organization Pro Juventute .

Awards

• 1997: Aspect Literature Prize , for The Pollen Room
• 1997: 3sat scholarship at the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize
• 1997: Literature Prize from the Jürgen Ponto Foundation for The Pollen Room
• 2002: Central Switzerland Audience Award for Literature , for the short story Auf der Heimfahrt

Works

• The pollen room . Novel. FVA, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-627-00052-8 .
  • as paperback: btb, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-442-72383-3 .
  • as audio book: abridged version, read by Alexandra Henkel . 2 MCs . Tandem, Königswinter 1998.
• The call of the conch horn . Novel. FVA, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-627-00073-0 .
  • as paperback: btb, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-442-72692-1 .
• Mittelpünktchen's journey around the world , illustrated by Bernd Pfarr . Hanser, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-446-20006-1 .
  • as paperback: dtv, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-423-62121-4 .
• A quick life . Novel. Structure, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-351-02951-9 .
  • as paperback: Aufbau, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-7466-2059-7 .
  • as audio book: Reading with Sascha Icks. Production: Südwestrundfunk. 3 CDs . DAV, Berlin 2002.
• The portrait . Novel. FVA, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-627-00142-1 .
  • as paperback: btb, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-442-73905-9 .
• The sky is changing . Novel. Legend Press, 2010, ISBN 978-1-906-55817-8 .
• Sugar Rush . Short story. Probsthayn (Literatur-Quickie 38), Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-942212-38-0 .
• No later than tomorrow. Stories. Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt, Frankfurt am Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-627-00197-1 .
• Natalie K: My story begins in a wonderful village: the records of a child murderer . Editor: Zoë Jenny. Salis Verlag, Zurich 2017, ISBN 978-3-906195-60-5 .

literature

• Zoë Jenny in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)

Web links

• Publications by and about Zoë Jenny in the Helveticat catalog of the Swiss National Library
• Literature by and about Zoë Jenny in the catalog of the German National Library
• Entry in the Bibliomedia Foundation's authors' directory
• Entry about Zoë Jenny in the lexicon of the Association of Authors of Switzerland
• Short biography and reviews of works by Zoë Jenny at perlentaucher.de
• Zoë Jenny's website. ( Memento from June 25, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Archive version

Individual evidence

1. ↑ «My daughter is just a child of divorce». In: Blick.ch , December 8, 2011.
2. ↑ Zoë Jenny: She moves to Zurich - with a new love
3. ↑ «They waged a war against us». In: Schweizer Illustrierte , No. 22, June 22, 2015.
4. ↑ Zoë Jenny: My teachers were pedophile do-gooders. In: Die Welt from October 14, 2013.
5. ^ Pro Juventute: Zoë Jenny. Retrieved January 28, 2014. (Archive)