Katja Lange-Müller was born in East Berlin in 1951. In 1986 she received the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize; in 1995 the Alfred Döblin Prize; in 2002 the literature prize awarded by ZDF, 3sat, and the city of Mainz; in 2005 the Kassel Literature Prize for grotesque humor; in 2008 the LiteraTour Nord Prize, Gerti Spies Prize, and Wilhelm Raabe Prize; and in 2013 the Kleist Prize. She was a Villa Massimo fellow in 2012/2013 and a fellow at the Tarabya Cultural Academy in Istanbul in 2013/2014. She received the Günter Grass Prize in 2017 and the Turmschreiber Prize of the city of Deidesheim in 2023. Her works have been translated into several languages.
