Yael Inokai

Yael Inokai (born 1989 in Basel as Yael Pieren) is a Swiss writer.

Yael Inokai
Yael Inokai in 2017
Born	Yael Pieren 1989 (age 35–36) Basel, Switzerland
Occupation	Writer
Alma mater	Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin
Notable awards	Swiss Literature Awards (2018) Anna Seghers Prize (2022) Clemens-Brentano-Preis (2023)

Biography

Yael Inokai is the daughter of a Hungarian father and a German mother.^[1] From 2011 she studied philosophy in Basel and Vienna. From 2014, she studied screenwriting at the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin.^[2] She also works as a tour guide^[2][3] and has published articles in literary magazines and on Zeit Online.^[4] In 2012, her first novel, Stork Bite (German: Storchenbiss), was published by Rotpunktverlag.^[5] In 2013, Inokai received a residency scholarship for the Literary Colloquium Berlin [de].^[6] In 2015, she became the Hildesheim Stadtschreiber [de] on a nomination from the local magazine Bella triste [de]. Her second novel Maelstrom [de] (German: Mahlstrom), published in 2017, was awarded one of the highly endowed Swiss Literature Awards in 2018.^[7] In October 2018, she further received the Würth Literature Prize (2nd prize) for the short story "The Foreigner" (German: Der Ausländer), awarded by the Würth company in cooperation with the University of Tübingen.^[8] Inokai's novel Mahlstrom was also adapted as a radio play by SRF in 2019 and broadcast in January 2020.^[9] It was also broadcast by Deutschlandfunk Kultur in December 2020.^[10]

In 2020, she wrote the short story "The Decent One" (German: Der Anständige) for the ARD Radio Festival [de].^[11]

The novel A Simple Intervention [de] (German: Ein simpler Eingriff) was published in Berlin in 2022. In it, Inokai tells from the perspective of a nurse about lesbian love and a society that makes people sick and thinks it can heal them by means of surgical interventions.^[12] With special reference to this novel, Inokai was awarded one of the two Anna Seghers Prizes in 2022.^[12]

Inokai is the director of textual studies in Berlin.

Awards

• Swiss Literature Award for Maelstrom (2018)
• Anna Seghers Prize for A Simple Intervention (2022)
• Longlist for the German Book Prize with A Simple Intervention (2022)
• Clemens-Brentano-Preis for A Simple Intervention (2023)