Magdalena Parys was born in 1971 in Gdansk. At the age of 12, she emigrated with her family to Germany. She graduated from Humboldt University and lives in Berlin, where she founded the Polish-German literary magazine Squaws. She writes poetry, short stories and novels. Her first novel won the Golden Owl prize in Austria. In 2019 she published "The Magician", which won the European Union Prize for Literature.