Alexander Widner was born in Vienna in 1940 and grew up in Carinthia and Lower Austria. He began to write relatively late in his life, because, as the author says, ?there?s nothing to write about if you have not lived enough.? An independent writer today, Widner floats between New York and Klagenfurt, where he worked at the city?s Department of Culture for several years. In his most recent texts, his literary interest focuses on snapshots, on isolating details from the whole and making them visible. His aphorisms on ?the Austria that is? are a grotesque, sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek examination of the country and its inhabitants that triggers memories of Helmut Qualtinger. His novel ?Kreitzberg? was published in 2009; ?City Runs. Für Gravesend übernommen? is forthcoming in spring 2011.