21st Century
We can divide German-language literary production since 2000 into poetry, prose fiction and drama, although in practice many writers work across genres:
German-language dramatists publishing since 2000 include (in alphabetical order): Lukas Bärfuss, Kerstin Hensel, Elfriede Jelinek, Fritz Kater (=Armin Petras), Dea Loher, Volker Lösch, Marius von Mayenburg, Felix Mitterer, Albert Ostermaier, René Pollesch, Rimini Protokoll (=Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi and Daniel Wetzel), Milo Rau, Kathrin Röggla, Tucké Royale, Eugen Ruge, Sasha Marianna Salzmann, Roland Schimmelpfennig, Kerstin Specht, Botho Strauß, Yoko Tawada, Peter Turrini, Urs Widmer.
German-language novelists and writers of prose fiction publishing since 2000 include (in alphabetical order): Fatma Aydemir, Zdenka Becker, Sybille Berg, Marcel Beyer, Maxim Biller, Klaus Böldl, Nora Bossong, Jan Böttcher, Volker Braun, Irena Brežná, Melitta Breznik, Alina Bronsky, Ann Cotten, Martin R. Dean, Kim de l'Horizon, Friedrich Christian Delius, Esther Dischereit, Ulrike Draesner, Tanja Dückers, Özlem Özgül Dündar, Karen Duve, Jenny Erpenbeck, Jan Faktor, Julia Franck, Ursula Fricker, Valerie Fritsch, Arno Geiger, Gunther Geltinger, Wilhelm Genazino, Thomas Glavinic, Rainald Goetz, Lena Gorelik, Olga Grjasnowa, Annett Gröschner, Norbert Gstrein, Erich Hackl, Katharina Hagener, Ulla Hahn, Ernst-Wilhelm Händler, Eveline Hasler, Helene Hegemann, Christoph Hein, Jana Hensel, Kerstin Hensel, Judith Hermann, Wolfgang Herrndorf, Thomas Hettche, Barbara Honigmann, Felicitas Hoppe, Alois Hotschnig, Elfriede Jelinek, Zoë Jenny, Reinhard Jirgl, Wladimir Kaminer, Yadé Kara, Daniel Kehlmann, Navid Kermani, Abbas Khider, Anna Kim, Esther Kinsky, Alexander Kluge, Angelika Klüssendorf, Michael Köhlmeier, Angela Krauß, Daniela Krien, Rita Kuczynski, Günter Kunert, Meral Kureyshi, Katja Lange-Müller, Sibylle Lewitscharoff, Irina Liebmann, Jonas Lüscher, Tanja Maljartschuk, Jagoda Marinić, Monika Maron, Christoph Meckel, Birk Meinhardt, Eva Menasse, Robert Menasse, Clemens Meyer, Anna Mitgutsch, Kerstin Mlynkec, Terézia Mora, Herta Müller, Melinda Nadj Abonji, Ingrid Noll, Hanns-Josef Ortheil, Sharon Dodua Otoo, Angelika Overath, Aysel Özakin, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Annette Pehnt, Katja Petrowskaja, Matthias Politycki, Marion Poschmann, Doron Rabinovici, Julya Rabinowich, Christoph Ransmayr, Sven Regener, Anne Richter, Charlotte Roche, Kathrin Röggla, Peter Rosei, Gerhard Roth, Ralf Rothmann, Eugen Ruge, Sasha Marianna Salzmann, Mithu Sanyal, Stefanie Sargnagel, Silke Scheuermann, Robert Schindel, Bernhard Schlink, Kathrin Schmidt, Ingo Schulze, Zafer Şenocak, Burkhard Spinnen, Peter Stamm, Saša Stanišić, Thomas von Steinaecker, Botho Strauß, Marlene Streeruwitz, Antje Rávic Strubel, Alain Claude Sulzer, Yoko Tawada, Alev Tekinay, Uwe Tellkamp, Jackie Thomae, Uwe Timm, Hans-Ulrich Treichel, Ilija Trojanow, Birgit Vanderbeke, Senthuran Varatharajah, Vladimir Vertlib, Peter Wawerzinek, Richard Weihe, Wolfgang Welt, Olivia Wenzel, Andreas Martin Widmann, Urs Widmer, Michael Wildenhain, Josef Winkler, Natascha Wodin, Hengameh Yaghoobifarah, Feridun Zaimoğlu, Judith Zander, Juli Zeh.
German-language poets publishing since 2000 include (in alphabetical order): Jürgen Becker, Marcel Beyer, Bas Böttcher, Volker Braun, Zehra Çirak, Max Czollek, Heinrich Detering, Esther Dischereit, Ulrike Draesner, Wiglaf Droste, Özlem Özgül Dündar, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Elke Erb, Nora Gomringer, Durs Grünbein, Dorothea Grünzweig, Ulla Hahn, Kerstin Hensel, Adel Karasholi, Thomas Kling, Barbara Köhler, Uwe Kolbe, Michael Krüger, Günter Kunert, Kito Lorenc, Friederike Mayröcker, Christoph Meckel, Albert Ostermaier, Bert Papenfuß-Gorek, Monika Rinck, Ulrike Almut Sandig, Evelyn Schlag, Lutz Seiler, Ludwig Steinherr, Antje Rávic Strubel, Anja Utler, Jan Wagner, Michael Wildenhain, Uljana Wolf.
German-language autobiographies published in this period include those by Nora Eckert, Ika Hügel-Marshall, Ruth Klüger, Emine Sevgi Özdamar and Gert Schramm.
Travel writers include: Irena Brežná, Navid Kermani, Katja Petrowskaja, Ilija Trojanow
Sociologists and political scientists include: Ulrich Beck, Axel Honneth, Oliver Nachtwey, Wolfgang Streeck.
Journalists include: Jakob Augstein, Maxim Biller, Dietmar Dath, Kübra Gümüşay, Georg Löwisch, Bascha Mika, Ines Pohl, Jürgen Schreiber, Alice Schwarzer, Margarete Stokowski.
Bloggers include: Rainald Goetz, Kübra Gümüşay, Rasha Khayat, Sascha Lobo, Ronja von Rönne, Stefanie Sargnagel.
If the writer you are looking for is not on this page, then he or she may be on the 20th century page instead, e.g. Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Günter Grass, Christa Wolf.
Further Reading
Leslie A. Adelson, The Turkish Turn in Contemporary German Literature: Towards a New Critical Grammar of Migration (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005)
Bettina Brandt and Yasemin Yildiz (eds.), Tales That Touch: Migration, Translation, and Temporality in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century German Literature and Culture (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2022)
Claudia Breger, An Aesthetics of Narrative Performance: Transnational Theatre, Literature, and Film in Contemporary Germany (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2012)
Tom Cheesman, Novels of German-Turkish Settlement: Cosmopolite Fictions (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2007)
Sarah Colvin (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of German Politics & Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 2014)
Paul Cooke, Representing East Germany since Unification (Oxford: Berg, 2005)
Anne Fuchs, Kathleen James-Chakraborty, and Linda Shortt (eds.), Debating Cultural Identity (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2011)
Katharina Gerstenberger, Writing the New Berlin: The German Capital in Post-Wall Literature (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2008)
Katharina Gerstenberger and Patricia Herminghouse (eds.), German Literature in a New Century: Trends, Traditions, Transitions, Transformations (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2008)
Elisabeth Herrmann, Carrie Smith-Prei and Stuart Taberner (eds.), Transnationalism in Contemporary German-Language Literature (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2015)
Karen Leeder (ed.), From Stasiland to Ostalgie. The GDR Twenty Years After, Oxford German Studies, 38:3 (2009) [special issue]
Karen Leeder (ed.), Schaltstelle: Neue deutsche Lyrik im Dialog, German Monitor 69 (Amsterdam, Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 2007) [contains several essays in English]
Lyn Marven and Stuart Taberner (eds.), Emerging German-Language Novelists of the Twenty-First Century (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2011)
Linda Shortt, German Narratives of Belonging: Writing Generation and Place in the Twenty-First Century (London: Legenda, 2015)
Stuart Taberner (ed.), German Literature in the Age of Globalisation (Birmingham: Birmingham University Press, 2004)
Stuart Taberner, German Literature of the 1990s and Beyond: Normalization & The Berlin Republic (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2005)
Stuart Taberner (ed.), Contemporary German Fiction: Writing in the Berlin Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)
Stuart Taberner (ed.), The Novel in German Since 1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)
Stuart Taberner, Transnationalism and German-Language Literature in the Twenty-First Century (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)
Denise Varney (ed.), Theatre in the Berlin Republic: German Drama since Reunification (Oxford and Bern: Peter Lang, 2008)
Web Links in English
http://www.new-books-in-german.com/
English language reviews of contemporary German-language authors
https://www.lyrikline.org/en/home/
International Poetry website (in several languages)
http://www.litrix.de/index.html
Online introductions to contemporary German authors (in English, German and Russian)
Mediating Modern Poetry, University of Oxford
https://ilcs.sas.ac.uk/research-centres/centre-study-contemporary-womens-writing-ccww
Information on contemporary German-language women writers, based at the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women's Writing (CCWW), School of Advanced Study, University of London