Philipp Winkler was born in 1986 and grew up in the small town of Hagenburg, near Hannover, Germany. He studied creative writing in Hildesheim. He has spent time in Kosovo, Albania, Serbia, and Japan. Winkler received the Joseph Heinrich Colbin Prize in 2008, and in 2015 the Literaturhaus Graz awarded him the Retzhof Prize for young authors based on excerpts from his then unpublished novel, Hooligan, which went on to win the Aspekte Literature Prize for the best German-language debut in 2016. Hooligan was also shortlisted for the 2016 German Book Prize. Winkler lives in Leipzig, Germany.