Renate Welsh: Austria ⋆ Author

Renate Welsh often describes her childhood as being an unhappy one—the early deaths of her mother and grandfather, along with living through WWII, left her struggling with emotional damage. Early on, she began working through her traumatic experiences by writing, and by the time she entered high school she was well on her way to a successful career as an author. Welsh began a post-secondary degree in English in 1955, but left her studies after her marriage in 1956 and began working for the British Council in Vienna. She wrote her first book, Der Enkel des Löwenjägers [The Lion Hunter's Grandson], during a hospital stay in 1968, and after its success Welsh began working full-time as a writer. Over the past 42 years, she has published over fifty books, and has managed to do so while also contributing to many literary projects and collectives.

Through her writing, Welsh works to offer voices to those who cannot be heard on their own—her stories often take on drug addiction, immigrants, and marginalized groups. Her ability to transform realistic experiences into literary narrative is masterful, and she relates to her young readers through real-life conflict and emotional strife. Books such as Johana and In die Waagschale geworfen. Österreicher im Widerstand [Thrown into the Scales: Austrians in the Resistance Movement] are drawn from true experiences of survivors and their families, and Welsh narrates their stories with sincerity and attention to detail. Given her difficult childhood, Welsh is able to express emotional struggle in situations of conflict and crisis, and her narratives often feature child characters searching for identity in the midst of traumatic experience. Her young readers are able to connect with the characters in her novels and in turn can learn suitable coping strategies. For Welsh, childhood takes on the form of a "hurdle race" toward the future, and, in turn, her characters often take on the greatest hurdle of them all—that of truly finding themselves.

Welsh's stories not only influence Austrian children's search for identity, but also those of children around the world. Over the years her books have been translated into a number of languages, including Spanish, Danish, French, and Afrikaans, and have accumulated several awards. Welsh's contributions to young people are not limited to her literature, as she runs workshops for disabled young people, and she continues to impact her young readers through realistic yet sensitive representations of marginalized individuals and groups.