This year, the City of Leipzig’s Gutenberg Prize goes to author, book designer and editor Judith Schalansky. The German Museum of Books and Writing is marking the occasion by devoting a showcase exhibition to the prize winner; this exhibition is titled “Endless Expanses” and pays homage to a synthesis that is unique in the world of book culture. The exhibition invites visitors to take a seat and use their eyes, ears and hands – to immerse themselves in Judith Schalansky’s full cosmos.

Judith Schalansky, this year’s Gutenberg Prize winner, is one of the most original voices in contemporary literature and a book designer whose views on the relationship between content and form are unique in the world of books. Her world moves from fungal spores, plants, animals and the ocean into space and back. “After all, reality is the most incredible thing there is,” she says, capturing the world between two book covers.

Born in Greifswald in 1980, the author published her highly acclaimed first work, the typography compendium “Fraktur Mon Amour”, in 2006. She has received several awards for her meticulously researched publications, which include “Atlas der abgelegenen Inseln” (Atlas of Remote Islands), “Verzeichnis einiger Verluste” (An Inventory of Losses) and “Der Hals der Giraffe” (The Giraffe’s Neck). As an editor, she is also responsible for the successful “Naturkunden” (Natural History) book series published by Matthes & Seitz Berlin. Judith Schalansky’s work in all these areas makes her in many ways the perfect choice for this award, the ethos of which she wholeheartedly supports.

Since 1959, the City of Leipzig’s Gutenberg Prize, bestowed in memory of Johannes Gutenberg, has been used to honour people and institutions that – according to the Prize’s statutes – “have shown merit through their outstanding, exemplary efforts to promote book art”. Since 1993, it has been awarded on an annually alternating basis with the City of Mainz’s prize of the same name. The German Museum of Books and Writing is a member of the jury. The Prize is awarded for special artistic, technical or academic achievements in the areas of typography, book illustration, book-art publishing, book creation and services to the dissemination of the free word.