Born in California, Zink was raised in rural Virginia, a setting she draws on in her second, forthcoming novel, Mislaid (Ecco, 2015). She attended Stuart Hall School and the College of William and Mary.[2] In 1993, while living in West Philadelphia, Zink founded a zine called Animal Review, which ran until 1997 and "featured submissions and interviews with punk musicians about their pets, from King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp writing about his rabbit Beaton Bunnerius Bun, to Jon Langford, of British punk band The Mekons, discussing his loach fish." Zink has worked as a secretary at Colgate-Palmolive, and as a technical writer in Tel Aviv. Zink moved to Germany in May 2000,eventually earning a doctorate in Media Studies from the University of Tübingen.[2]
Zink was married twice, to the US citizen Benjamin Alexander Burck and to the Israeli composer and poet Zohar Eitan
Zink has taken an unorthodox path to literary success. After fifteen years spent writing fiction exclusively for a single pen pal, the Israeli postmodernist Avner Shats, Zink caught the attention of Jonathan Franzen with a "brazen" letter promoting the work of a German ornithologist. The two writers began a correspondence, and Franzen was surprised to learn that Zink had no published literary work. Zink began to create work for Franzen:
I was so tired of Franzen saying that I should take myself seriously as a writer and I wanted to make very clear that there's a very clear distinction between taking your career seriously and taking your writing seriously. So I wrote the first part of a new novel, called The Wallcreeper, in just four days to show him that I knew what I was doing as a writer.
In early 2012, Zink sent Franzen her collected manuscripts. Franzen tried unsuccessfully to interest publishers in her 1998 novel Sailing Towards the Sunset by Avner Shats (sic). It was Franzen's agent who finally negotiated a six-figure publishing deal for Zink's Mislaid.[3] Meanwhile, The Wallcreeper, "about a bird-loving American couple that moves to Europe and becomes, basically, eco-terrorists" (Keith Gessen), was published independently in the United States in 2014. New York Times reviewer Robin Romm wrote "Zink's work may be, at times, cerebral and a little distancing, but its vitality and purpose are invigorating." Kirkus Reviews called it "a brief yet masterful novel of epic breadth.
Zink lives in Bad Belzig, Germany.] Zink worked in construction, waited tables, and was a secretary before working as a translator. "There's never a market for true art," Zink told an interviewer, "so my main concern was always to have a job that didn’t require me to write or think.
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Born in California, Zink was raised in rural Virginia, a setting she draws on in her second, forthcoming novel, Mislaid (Ecco, 2015). She attended Stuart Hall School and the… Развернуть
