Elina Penner
Elina Penner was born in 1987 as a Mennonite German in the former Soviet Union. Plautdietsch is her mother tongue, she learned Russian first in the Soviet and German later in German kindergarten. She moved to Germany in 1991. She was a scholarship holder of the German Bundestag within the framework of the Parliamentary Sponsorship Program. She studied American Studies and Political Science in Regensburg and Berlin. Penner worked for the Bastei Lübbe-Startup Oolipo, the Bertelsmann communication agency Territory and Weiterschreiben e.V. under the leadership of Annika Reich, among others. She has been working for years as a freelance author for online platforms and magazines and runs the successful family blog Hauptstadtmutti. After years in Berlin and in the USA, she now lives with her husband and children in East Westphalia. 2020 she was awarded with the Arnold Dyck Award.