Gregor Hens is a German writer of fiction and creative non–fiction, and a literary translator. He received his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley and taught linguistics in the US for more than twenty years. He was a writer in residence at Magdalene College in Cambridge and has been shortlisted, with Rawi Hage, for the International Literature Prize (Berlin). He has notably translated Will Self and Kurt Vonnegut into German. Hens currently teaches Urban Studies and Creative Writing at the Free University in Berlin. His memoir Nicotine was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2015.