Katja Oskamp was born in 1970 in Leipzig and grew up in Berlin. After completing her degree in theatre studies, she worked as a playwright at the Volkstheater Rostock and went on to study at the German Literature Institute in Leipzig. In 2007 she published her first novel Die Staubfängerin. Her book Marzahn, Mon Amour , published by Hanser with the subtitle 'Stories of a Chiropodist', was selected for the 'Berlin Reads One Book' campaign and thus literally became the talk of the town. She is a member of PEN Centre Germany. Marzahn, Mon Amour is her first novel to be translated into English. Her collection of stories Half Swimmer was published in the UK in 2024. Like the narrator in Marzahn, Mon Amour , Jo Heinrich found her ideal career in her middle years, and graduated in 2018 with a distinction in her MA in Translation from the University of Bristol.

She was shortlisted for the 2020 Austrian Cultural Forum London Translation Prize and the 2019 John Dryden Translation Competition. She translates from French and German, and she lives just outside Bristol with her family. Marzahn, Mon Amour is her first literary translation.