Nils Ketterer

Born in Starnberg/Germany in 1988.

Nils Ketterer currently resides nowhere and everywhere simultaneously (if anybody’s asking, it’s Berlin/Germany). He holds a BA in Political Science and Sociology from the Universities of Innsbruck/Austria and Valencia/Spain. He has lived in over 13 countries and had over 30 different jobs.

He started out as an annoying young and overachieving journalist for magazines like Gala, Vice, Glamour, Neon, and Stern, but quickly realized that was a horrible idea. It slowly dawned on him that objectivity doesn’t exist and that facts are much easier to digest when they’re made up. Thus his real writing started. To finance this even more horrible idea, he slowly made his way from washing dishes, drilling big holes in Deutsche Bahn tunnels and cleaning the lavatories of Cirque du Soleil to interviewing stars, modeling, authoring big social media campaigns and dining with Chancellors. He would sell his soul if he could – just to avoid a 9-5 job (the irony.)

Ketterer mainly writes real stories, mostly at night, when nobody’s listening. His début novel about a couple locked down on a sailboat in Panama during the pandemic is in the pipeline. His second novel, about a boy who dies and then goes traveling, will follow shortly thereafter. Works include his collection of short stories on txtappeal.de, the travel story Schwarzer Kater in Von Mut, Neugier und Reiselust (Reisedepeschen, 2024), a travel guide to Tyrol/Austria (Umschau Verlag, 2013) a story in Ein Tag auf dem Planeten (Engelsdorfer, 2009) – and an upcoming podcast with Helge Timmerberg.

Ketterer has just been awarded the Montségur Autorenakademie Fellowship for 2023–2025.

He is much better at keeping promises than holding soda cans.