Kerstin Kohlenberg

​​Kerstin Kohlenberg was selected for the 2026 Shortlist with Not again!

Kerstin Kohlenberg was born in Koblenz, Germany. After spending a year as an au pair in Paris, she studied sociology in Marburg, Berlin, and New York. She worked for ZDF-Television in New York and Berlin and completed a traineeship at Tagesspiegel. In 2004, Kohlenberg joined the weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT, where she first served as deputy head of the feature section „Dossier“ and later moved to the newly established investigative department. From 2014 to 2021, she headed DIE ZEIT’s Washington bureau. Since returning to Berlin, she has been working as a reporter, primarily writing about the United States. Kerstin Kohlenberg has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Herbert Riehl-Heyse Prize, the Theodor Wolff Prize, the German Journalism Prize, and the Reporter Prize. For DIE ZEIT, she produced the successful seven-part America podcast “Die Patrioten” in 2022. In June 2024, her book about the USA, “Ein amerikanisches Versprechen,” was published by Klett-Cotta Tropen Verlag.