Michael Krüger was born in 1943 in Sachsen-Anhalt. After training as a printer and publisher in Munich and London he joined the Carl Hanser publishing house where he has worked since (from 1986 as the Director from 1995 also as Business Manager). Since 1981 he has been editor in chief of the influential Akzente magazine and has also translated many contemporary poets into German. Since his debut volume Reginapoly in 1976 he has published many novels, short story collections and some 15 volumes of poetry, most recently Umstellung der Zeit with Suhrkamp (2013). He has won many prizes for his work (including the Peter Huchel Prize and the Ernst Meister Prize) and many international awards for his championing of contemporary European literature, most recently the London Book Fair Lifetime Achievement Award 2013. A Selected Poems, translated by Richard Dove, appeared in English with Carcanet in 1993; a new volume of Selected The Last Day of the Year appeared with Sheep Meadow Press and Carcanet in 2014.