Bettina Storks

Bettina Storks (born in 1960 near Stuttgart) is a literary scholar with a doctorate and an author. She studied German literature, German philology and cultural studies, and received her doctorate from the University of Freiburg in 1994 for a dissertation on the prose of Ingeborg Bachmann. She subsequently worked for several years as an editor. In 2007, she began writing fiction; in 2008, she received a grant from the Förderkreis Deutscher Schriftsteller Baden-Württemberg. Her novels include *Das geheime Lächeln*, *Leas Spuren* and *Die Schwestern von Krakau*. Her work often focuses on family secrets and German-French history. A visit to Dora Maar’s former home in Ménerbes, in the Luberon, led her to explore the artist’s life and work.