Cathrin Kahlweit

Cathrin Kahlweit was selected for the 2023 Shortlist with To Hell and Back. 

Cathrin Kahlweit was born in 1959 in Göttingen, Lower Saxony. She studied Russian and Political Science at the University of Oregon (USA), at the Universities of Tübingen and Göttingen (Germany) and at the Pushkin Institute (USSR) – and finished her MA in 1985.

After two years of further education at Henri-Nannen School of Journalism in Hamburg she worked freelance for TV-stations and magazines, before she joined the staff of Sueddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), one of the biggest national daily papers in Germany. 

Kahlweit has been an editor, reporter and correspondent for SZ for more than 30 years now, covering mainly Central and Eastern Europe and foreign politics. She worked in Frankfurt and Berlin and, as a foreign correspondent, in Vienna and London, traveling and writing about Brexit and the UK for three years, and about Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary and Austria for more than ten years now.

Kahlweit has three grown up children and wrote six books – not only about politics.

Alexandra Rojkov

Alexandra Rojkov was selected for the 2023 Shortlist with The Last Witness. 

Alexandra Rojkov was born in 1988 in St. Petersburg, Russia, but grew up in Germany. She has lived and worked in Riga, Cairo, Paris and Jerusalem. Her reporting has won several awards, including a CNN Journalist Award for outstanding international coverage. In 2016, Forbes Magazine named her one of Europe’s best journalists under 30 years old. She currently works as a foreign reporter for DER SPIEGEL.