Josef Winkler was born in Austria in 1953. He worked as an administrator at the University of Klagenfurt from 1973 until 1982, when he began writing full time. He was awarded the Austrian National Prize in 2007, the Georg Büchner Prize in 2008, and the ‘Ingeborg Bachmann Prize’ for his novel Meschenkind (Human Being) in 1979.
He lives in Klagenfurt.