The author Katja Brunner, born in Zurich in 1991, writes primarily theater texts. Her plays tell virulent, decidedly gynocentric and always humorous stories. In the process, Brunner's rhythmically condensed language twists the content into the abstract and becomes the impetus, even the actor, of the plot.
In 2010, she wrote her play von den beinen zu kurz, which premiered at Theater Winkelwiese in Zurich. In 2012 she takes part in the workshop days of the Vienna Burgtheater. In 2013 she is invited to the Heidelberg Stückemarkt with her play die hölle ist auch nur eine sauna, wins the Mülheim Playwrights' Prize with the German premiere of von den beinen zu kurz, and is voted Young Playwright of the Year in the critics' poll by the magazine Theater heute. In the 2014/2015 season Brunner is an in-house playwright at Theater Luzern and in the summer of 2015 a fellow at the Literary Colloquium Berlin. In 2016, she is awarded a Werkjahr by the city of Zurich for a draft novel. In February 2018, Brunner is awarded the Förderpreis des Kulturpreises des Regierungsrates Zürich for her work.
Most recently, in December 2017, the commissioned work DEN SCHLÄCHTERN IST KALT or OHLALAHELVETIA premiered at the Schauspielhaus Zurich. Her most recent piece DIE HAND IST EINSAMER JÄGER is an urgent poetic appeal, an invocation of multiform women's bodies, and a polyphonic declaration of war on supposed interpretive sovereignties.