Philipp Schönthaler studied literature in Vancouver and Brighton, and has a Phd from the University of Konstanz. His literary debut Nach oben ist das Leben offen (2012), a collection of stories, was awarded the Clemens Brentano Prize. Since then he published four more books, including a novel (Das Schiff das singend zieht auf seiner Bahn, 2013) and a study on the German Survival movement (Der dünne Pelz der Zivilisation. Survival in den 80er Jahren, 2016). Portrait of the Manager as a Young Author (2016) was published in English by MIT Press in 2018. In his latest book Vor Anbruch der Morgenröte (2017), a collection of stories, he grapples with developments in technology and digitalization and their relationship to literature, a field of work he would like to further look into during his stay at Villa Aurora.