Austrian author Eva Menasse will be Mainz's City Writer of the Year 2019. Menasse, born in Vienna in 1970 and now living in Berlin, is the 35th recipient of the literary prize awarded by ZDF, 3sat, and the City of Mainz. Together with ZDF, the author, like her predecessor Anna Katharina Hahn, will produce a documentary on a topic of her choice and move into the city writer's apartment in Mainz's Gutenberg Museum. The award ceremony for the prize, which is endowed with 12,500 euros, took place in March 2019.

The jury said: "Eva Menasse is a great storyteller who writes about fragile relationships with subtle empathy and astute humor. She crafts her characters with great linguistic precision and finds the finest nuances in her narrative situations. At the same time, Eva Menasse is publicly involved, effectively arguing for fundamental rights in the digital age and actively opposing discrimination and right-wing agitation. Eva Menasse – a stroke of luck for the office of Mainz City Writer 2019."

After graduating from school in 1988, Menasse studied German language and literature and history at the University of Vienna. While still a student, she began her journalistic career, which took her from the Viennese weekly magazine "Profil" to the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung." Eva Menasse made a brilliant debut with her first novel, the Austrian-Jewish family epic "Vienna" (2005). With her second novel, "Lässliche Todsünden" (2009), which consists of loosely connected stories about the dissolute life of the Viennese intellectual scene, she continued her success with audiences and critics alike. Her award-winning novel Quasikristalle (Quasicrystals, 2013) depicts the mosaic of a woman's life from a variety of perspectives. Her latest collection of short stories, Tiere für Fortgeschrittene (Animals for Advanced Learners, 2017), deals with the lies and illusions of the enlightened bourgeoisie.

Marianne Grosse, head of the city's cultural affairs department, is delighted with the jury's decision: "With Eva Menasse, we are gaining another highly renowned writer with charisma as Mainz's city writer. The former journalist, who also addressed her Jewish roots in her debut novel "Vienna," not only writes in a highly entertaining style with great verbal artistry, but also focuses on literarily fascinating topics—and stages them with finesse. Her work Quasikristalle, in which she takes a dissecting look at the many facets of a woman's life from a variety of perspectives over many decades, is a narrative feast for the imagination. Born in Austria and now living in Berlin, Eva Menasse, sister of the equally well-known author Robert Menasse, is a great storyteller who understands her craft to an excellent degree. She undoubtedly belongs to the forefront of German-language writing – Mainz can look forward to Eva Menasse!"

Eva Menasse has been honored with numerous awards, including

• the Corine Prize (2005),
• the Heinrich Böll Prize of the City of Cologne (2013),
• the Villa Massimo scholarship in Rome (2015),
• the Friedrich Hölderlin Prize (2017)
• and the Austrian Book Prize (2017).

Like her predecessors Anna Katharina Hahn, Abbas Khider, Clemens Meyer, Feridun Zaimoglu, and Judith Schalansky, Eva Menasse will produce a documentary on a topic of her choice in collaboration with ZDF and move into the completely renovated city writer's apartment in the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz.