Arja Rinnekangas was born in 1953 in Riistavesi, Central Finland. In 1983 she graduated from the University of Bonn with a Magister Artium, in 1997 her master’s thesis in Germanic Philology at the University of Oulu, Finland, and in 2013 she received her doctorate in Germanic Philology at the Swedish-speaking University of Åbo Akademi in Turku, Finland. Since 1999 she has been director and translator at LURRA Editions (www.lurraeditions.fi) and is responsible for its literary programme. Since 2000, she has been planning, organising and moderating numerous bilingual literary events in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut, the Swiss Embassy, the Austrian Embassy and the Aue Foundation.  In 2007/08 she received a research fellowship from the Ministry of Culture of Baden-Württemberg at the German Seminar of the University of Freiburg, and in 2013 she was awarded the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art.

www.goethe.de/rinnekangas