María Cecilia Barbetta was born in Buenos Aires in 1972. After attending a German-Argentine school, she completed a four-year teacher training course for German as a foreign language. She taught German until she came to Berlin in October 1996 on a DAAD scholarship. After completing her doctorate at the FU Berlin, Barbetta was engaged as a lecturer at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt an der Oder for five years. There she taught Spanish and literature in Spanish.
She also worked for three years as a research volunteer at the former Museum Educational Service Berlin (now Kulturprojekte Berlin) in the area of art exhibitions. In the summer of 2005, Barbetta began writing. Her first novel, Änderungsschneiderei Los Milagros was published by S. Fischer Verlag in 2008 and was awarded the aspekte literature prize, among others. Nachtleuchten (S. Fischer, 2018), her second novel, was honored with the Alfred Döblin Prize and was shortlisted for the German Book Prize. María Cecilia Barbetta writes in German.