Quirina Roode-Gutzmer


Location Germany
Occupation Scientist, translator
Website http://themindssky.wordpress.com

About Me

As an emerging creative writer I have one short piece of fiction published in TUCK Magazine (January 2013) and a few poems in the anthology "Petrichor Rising" published by Aquillrelle (July 2013).

Other facts that might be relevant: I used to entertain the idea, while being a student of chemistry, to one day work for NASA or to become a vet, a country vet, hauling out fowls and calves in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere. Chemistry wasn't enough, and while I studied applied mathematics I wanted to become an astrophysicist and study Black Holes, because Einstein's equations don't work in them. Now I solve partial differential equations for a living and launch model rockets for fun. But before that, I accidentally became a translator of German scientific literature into English. It was then that I was once horrified to learn how well a chimney sweep earns in Germany compared to a translator, so I imagined myself prancing around my neighbourhood in a black leather cat suit, scaling people's roofs for a living, which was nothing considering I was already climbing rock faces and had already cleaned skyscraper windows as a student. It was said of me once: "Give her a chalk bag and before you know it she is on the ceiling."

My writing also happened by accident and it started while I was studying mathematics, at the time I think it was when I was doing Möbius transformations and instead of doing the laundry, the dreadful housewife I was, I went and read German poetry and in order to understand them, I translated them, at first roughly, and then I became a little bit more specific and attempted to achieve a sense of structure in the translation, for example, meter and rhyme and that sort of thing. This lead to my writing my own poetry and eventually all sorts of other things and now I simply can't help myself any more. I write, therefore I am.

Why do you write?

Walking, eating, bathing. Being. Being in other places.

I write, because if I don't then the ideas in my head will evanesce and be forever lost.

Usually, the urge to write the most, happens when there is nothing to write with and nothing to write on.

Any favorite authors? Books?

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Erich Fried
Franz Kafka
Heinz Erhardt
Hector Hugh Munro (Saki)
Isaac Asimov
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Joseph Conrad
Kurt Vonnegut
Mariusz Szczygieł
Michael Ende
Michael Ondaatje
Milan Kundera
Norton Juster
Patrick Süskind
Peter Høeg
Rainer Maria Rilke
Ryszard Kapuściński
Simon Singh
Stephen Jay Gould
Wisława Szymborska
Walter Moers