Philip Oltermann was born in Schleswig-Holstein in 1981. He studied English and German literature in Oxford and London before beginning a career in journalism, for both German and English-language media. His articles have appeared in Granta, the London Review of Books, Prospect, The Nation and Süddeutsche Zeitung, among others. He is the founder of the English Writers Football Team, where his running style was once described as "looking entirely italicised". Philip co-edited How I Write: The Secret Lives of Authors. Keeping Up With the Germans: A History of Anglo-German Encounters was published by Faber & Faber in 2013. Since 2016, he has been The Guardian's bureau chief in Berlin, where he lives with his wife and son. The Stasi Poetry Circle will be published by Faber & Faber in 2020.