Daniel Mellem was born in 1987 and lives in Hamburg. He studied physics in Hamburg and London and earned his PhD on mitochondrial networks before he started working on his first novel at the German Institute for Literature in Leipzig. He attended the writing class of the Jürgen-Ponto-Foundation and his work was published in the Hamburg literature yearbook Ziegel. The manuscript of Die Erfindung des Countdowns (The invention of the countdown) won the Retzhof Award for Young Literature 2017 and the Hamburg Advancement Award for Literature in 2018 as well.