Schwitter was born in Zürich, Switzerland.[1] She studied stage direction and theater at the Mozarteum Salzburg from 1993 to 1997.[1] Having graduated, she worked as an actress at top-level houses for five years, such as the Schauspielhaus Zürich, the Schauspiel Frankfurt, and Schauspielhaus Graz. She was then an ensemble member at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg.[2] Throughout that period, she was a reciter, a dubbing actor and directed and produced several literary features about Peter Handke, Ernst Jandl, Raymond Queneau, and Sarah Kane. At the Deutsche Schauspielhaus she curated a literary salon and performed as a blues singer. In her acting career, she regularly was part of numerous theater festivals, such as Mülheimer Theatertagen (1999), "Reich und Berühmt" in Berlin (2001), "Theater der Welt" in Stuttgart (2005), Vienna Festival (2006), Salzburg Festival (2006), "Theaterformen" in Hannover (2007) and Berliner Theatertreffen (2008).
Starting 2002, she contributed prose and short stories in various literary magazines. After the editor Alfred Kolleritsch had become interested in her work, she published much of her early work in the Austrian literary magazine Manuskripte. Her first collection of short stories, Wenn's schneit beim Krokodil, was published in 2005 and was awarded the Robert-Walser Preis (2006)[2] and a prize by the Deutsche Schillerstiftung. In 2008, the theater Lucerne comissed the piece Himmels-W, which premiered there on April 3, 2008. In the same year, she was invited to participate in the 2008 Max Frisch Symposium in Brussels. Her debut novel Ohren haben keine Lider was also released in 2008 and was translated into Chinese in 2010 for the Expo in Shanghai. Her second volume of short stories, Goldfish Memory (German: Goldfischgedächtnis), was launched in 2011. In 2010, Monique Schwitter decided to end her acting career, in order to pursue writing full-time.[3]
Nominated by Hildegard Elisabeth Keller, she took part at the Festival of German-Language Literature (Ingeborg-Bachmann-Prize) in 2015.[4] Her novel Eins im Andern was short listed for the German Book Prize (German: Deutscher Buchpreis)[5] and received the Swiss Book Prize (German: Schweizer Buchpreis.[3] The novel is about a forty-year-old woman who during a random google search discovers that her first love had committed suicide many years ago. Learning this, she recounts the biography of her love life by telling the story of twelve previous lovers. In 2016, it was awarded the Swiss Literary Prize (German: Schweizer Literaturpreis).[6]
Her work has been translated into several languages, including French, Danish, Italian, Dutch, Chinese, Russian, Polish, and English.
Schwitter lives in Hamburg with her family since 2005.[1][7]
