Ann Cotten grew up in Vienna, Austria, where she studied literature and worked various jobs. 2006 she moved to Berlin. Her first book of poems "Fremdwörterbuchsonette" consisted of 78 double-sonnets in a hairpin formation, which surprised the German poetry scene. She published her diploma thesis on concrete poetry (Nach der Welt, Klever Verlag 2008), a second book of poetry and prose ostensibly written by a palette of characters and reviewed by Aliens (Florida-Rooms, Suhrkamp 2010) and a first book in English with the visual artist Kerstin Cmelka: "I, Coleoptile" (Broken Dimanche Press, 2011). With Monika Rinck and Sabine Scho, she forms the "Rotten Kinck Schow", an experimental theory revue. In 2013 "Der schaudernde Fächer" (The Quivering Fan) came out: a collection of short stories with erotic, philosophical and political content, which is true also of the thinner poetry collections "Hauptwerk. Softsoftporn" and "Rein – ja oder nein?". Much time was wasted on an attempt to develop mnemotechnical poetry to deal with Japanese Kanji, some of the resulting texts are collected in the most recent book "Jikiketsugaki. Tsurezuregusa" (Verlag Peter Engstler, 2017). 2016 saw the publication of the epic poem "Verbannt!". A second English language publication, "Lather in Heaven", was published in 2017 by Broken Dimanche Press; this is a collection of poetry and prose  in English, with photography by the author.