Björn Stephan, born in 1987 and raised in Schwerin, lives in Munich. As a reporter, he writes for DIE ZEIT and SZ-Magazin. His reportages have won many awards, including the Reporter Award and the German Social Award. For his literary debut “Nur vom Weltraum aus ist die Erde blau” (Only from Space is the Earth Blue), he received the Ulla Hahn Authors’ Prize, the Art and Culture Prize of the state capital Schwerin, and was shortlisted for the Fontane Literature Prize in 2021.