Little Paris Bookshop (George) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—August 30, 1973
• Where—Bielfeld, Germany
• Education—high school
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Concarneau, France


Nina George is a German writer, most recently known as the author of The Little Paris Bookshop (2015), an international bestseller, that has been translated in more than 28 languages. All told, she has published more than 25 books (novels, mysteries and non-fiction), as well as over one hundred short stories.

As a cop reporter, columnist and managing editor, George has also published more than 600 columns. She has worked as a for a wide range of publications, including Hamburger Abendblatt, Die Welt, Der Hamburger, as well as TV Movie and Federwelt.

Life and work
George dropped out of school in 1991 before finishing high school and worked in various catering establishments from the age of fourteen. Since 1993, she has written as a freelance journalist and columnist for magazines like Cosmopolitan, Penthouse, TV Movie, Frau im Trend. In 1997, she wrote her first book, Good Girls Do It in Bed, Bad Ones Everywhere, under the pseudonym Anne West. She was living in Hamburg. In 2008, she appeared under the name Nina Kramer in Thriller A Life Without Me about women's reproductive health.

It was after her father's death that George wrote The Little Paris Bookshop, a semi-autobiographical novel, which talks about bibliotherapy, how the fear of death holds us back from living life to the fullest, the mourning process, and travel on river boat from Paris to the south of Provence.

The novel also contains meta-literary references to many famous works and authors, including Erich Kästner's idea of a list of books as remedies for different afflictions. At the end there's an appendix where she offers an alphabetical list of books and what she recommends them for, starting with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. She finds inspiration for her writing in reading authors such as Jon Kalman Stefansson, Anna Gavalda, Dominique Manotti, Erica Jong, and Dorothea Brande.

George lives in Concarneau in France with her husband Jo Kramer.

Pseudonyms
George writes under three pen-names. Under Anne West, she writes non-fiction about issues of love, sexuality and eroticism. Under Nina Kramer, her married name, she wrote a thriller in 2008. She also wrote detective novels with her husband and co-writer Jo Kramer, their pseudonym being Jean Bagnol.

Awards
In 2012 and 2013 she won the DeLiA and the Glauser-Prize. Her first bestselling novel The Little Paris Bookshop (first published in German as "Das Lavendelzimmer" on May 2, 2013).

Associations
George is a member of PEN, Das Syndikat (association of German-language crime writers), the Association of German Authors (VS), the Hamburg Authors’ Association (HAV), BücherFrauen (Women in Publishing), the IACW/AIEP (International Association of Crime Writers), the GEDOK (Association of female artists in Germany), PRO QUOTE and Lean In. Nina George sits on the board of the Three Seas Writers’ and Translators’ Council (TSWTC), whose members come from 16 different countries.

In 2014, she delivered the keynote address in Berlin at the German Writer’s Conference to 140 attending writers. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 8/19/2015.)