Vanessa Walder

is an Austrian book- and screenplay writer and translator. She was born in 1978 in Heidelberg, Germany, and grew up in Vienna, Austria. She's been living in Berlin since 2008. She has published over a hundred books for children and young adults and several movie screenplays. Her books have been translated into 37 languages, received numerous nominations and awards, and repeatedly made it on the Spiegel bestseller list.

Walder is a member of Deutsche Filmakademie, Deutscher Drehbuchverband and Drehbuchverband Austria, of Spreeautoren and Donauautoren, Österreichischer Schriftstellerverband and PAN.

First Book under "Vanessa Walder" 2001:

"Ghostbusters on A Secret Trail"

Illustrations by Alex de Wolf

Life

Vanessa Walder is an Austrian book- and screenwriter. She was born in Heidelberg in the summer of 1978 when, according to legend, Austria defeated Germany in soccer.

She learned to walk and talk in idyllic Weinheim, but the family moved back to Austria before she started school: to Gablitz on the outskirts of Vienna. Walder spent most of her childhood in the Vienna Forest. It is, therefore, not surprising that the forest and its animals play a leading role in many of her stories.

In her diaries, which she kept from age six, Walder mainly noted observations of nature. At age eight, she wrote and illustrated her first short story as a present for her younger brother. It was about the lion king who had to find a wife. If those involved remember correctly, the lion eventually preferred to remain single.

At school, Walder was good at German and English but didn't actually like any subject. Instead of getting up early to catch the school bus, she would rather have stayed home and read books. In 1996, she graduated from high school, and because she didn't know what else to do, she studied law at the University of Vienna and moved to the city. To pay the rent, she worked as a freelance journalist on the side and sold her first short stories to a magazine. At the time, she already had dozens of them in her drawers. Little by little, her diaries had turned into notebooks and, at some point, contained a curious mixture of reality and fiction.

Walder eventually became editor and then head of a youth magazine and worked for the Austrian Youth Book Club and the Austrian Red Cross publications.

In 1998, she interviewed the German children's book author Christian Bieniek. He suggested that Walder write books rather than articles. Bieniek sent one of Walder's short stories to his agent, Silke Weniger. Weniger signed Vanessa Walder and brought her to Loewe-Verlag with a series for young people.

The first of sixteen volumes in the "sisters" series was published in 2001 under the pseudonym C.B. Lessmann because the idea and characters came from Christian Bieniek and his fellow author Marlene Jablonski. Further series followed in collaboration with the two authors. Schneider Verlag published six volumes of the "Ein Pferd für alle Fälle" series, Ueberreuter six volumes of the "Zwei echte Profis" crime series, and S. Fischer six volumes of the "Das Insel-Internat" series. The "Leas Liebes GmbH" series by Christian Bieniek and Vanessa Walder at Arena-Verlag ended after five volumes due to the sudden death of popular author Bieniek.

From the very beginning, Walder also wrote children's books and series on her own, such as "Liebesprotokolle" for Random House cbj or "Marlas verflixte Fälle" for Ravensburger - which she ultimately preferred and still does, despite all the joy of working together.

The only exception is filmmaking, which has its mechanisms and methods. In the end, hundreds of people work together to create something. But it always starts with a book. In 2008, Vanessa Walder began working with producer Uschi Reich to adapt the book "Here Comes Lola" by author Isabel Abedi into a movie screenplay. Director Franziska Buch made it into a film in 2010, which won numerous international awards.

Over the next few years, Walder worked with Producers At Work on a film adaptation of the "Conni & Co" series published by Carlsen. The film was finally released in 2016, with Emma Schweiger as the lead. The sequel followed in 2017 under the direction of Til Schweiger.

Walder then worked for Ulysses Films on the animated film "Bayala," based on the figures from toy manufacturer Schleich. The movie was released in cinemas worldwide in 2019. Walder then wrote another screenplay with Til Schweiger: "Lieber Kurt," based on a novel by Sarah Kuttner. Til Schweiger directed the film (after a delay due to the Coronavirus pandemic) and released it in 2022.

At the same time, Walder discovered Alice Oceman's graphic novel "Heartstopper" on the Internet, contacted the author and tried to find a German publisher for the love story. Loewe Verlag finally decided to create a label for graphic novels, and Walder translated the story about Nick and Charlie into German. The series was soon discovered and filmed by Netflix, and the books — like the Oceman novel "Loveless" Walder also translated — became bestsellers in Germany.

Walder continues to translate books that are close to her heart into German. These include those by authors such as Ahmed Zappa, Tegan + Sara, Narinder Dhami, and Katherine Paterson.

In recent years, her children's book trilogies "The Elfking's Magical Curse," "The Wild Bah," "The Unbearables & Me," and the series "The Secret Life of Animals" have been published by Loewe Verlag. The series "Bobby & Boss," about a boy and girl who are best friends despite their parents' dislike of each other, was published by Carlsen Verlag. Several of Vanessa Walder's books have been on the Spiegel bestseller list, and many have received nominations and awards.

Over the past twenty years, Vanessa Walder has given 250 readings annually to thousands of children in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Denmark, and even the United Arab Emirates. Today, she only participates in a few selected events, preferably in the local area, because she'd still rather stay home and read books.

Her books "Flora Magica — The Secret of the Nightshades," "Animal Fire Brigade — A Racoon Gets Involved," and "The Adventures of the White She-Wolf" will be published in the spring of 2025. "Flora Magica — The Gift of Evil Herbs," "The Animal Fire Brigade — A Soaking Wet Rescue Operation," and the new children's series "Nightmore — The Scariest Boarding School in the World" will follow in the fall.

Vanessa Walder has lived in Berlin since 2008 in an old house between two even older lakes. Now, she lives on the forest's edge again, only this time, it's the Grunewald.

She is a member of Spreeautoren, co-founder of Donauautoren, a member of the German Film Academy, the German Screenwriting Association, the Austrian Screenwriting Association, the PAN network of fantasy authors, and the Austrian Writers' Association.