Esther Kinsky was born in 1956 in Engelkirchen, Germany and after living in the UK for a decade, now lives in Hungary. She is considered one of the most distinguished translators from Polish into German and was awarded the prestigious Berlin Brucke award together with the author Olga Tokarczuk for her translation of the novel Taghaus, Nachthaus.

Having translated nearly fifty books, her translations from Polish include prose by well-known authors such as Miron Bialoszewski, Hanna Krall, Aleksander Wat, Ida Fink, Olga Tokarczuk, Magdalena Tulli, and poetry by Ryszard Krynicki. Her own writings include Tiefebene, a memoir (1995), and her poetry was included in the recent volume Modern Poetry in Translation No. 17: Mother Tongues.