Alexander Estis was born into the
Jewish family of Soviet artists and . From childhood, he studied drawing attending art schools and private lessons. In 1996, he moved with his parents to
Hamburg. He finished the
Johannes Brahms High School in
Pinneberg in 2004 and graduated from the Language Department of the
Faculty of Humanities at the University of Hamburg in 2010. He has taught drawing, Latin, German, and modern German literature at the (Hamburg) and
Collège Calvin (Geneva) as well as medieval German literature and historical linguistics at the universities of Hamburg,
Freiburg,
Geneva,
Zurich and the School of Management and Law at the
Zurich University of Applied Sciences/ZHAW. Since 2016, Estis has been living in
Aarau. As an active participant in the literary process of the German-speaking community, he delivers lectures on literature, teaches courses in literary studies, and appears regularly on the radio station
Deutschlandfunk Kultur. As a writer, Estis works mainly in the genre of
flash fiction (
aphorisms, lyrical and stage miniatures,
glosses, micronarratives,
epigrams, essays), combining elements of essayism and
speculative fiction, satirical and tragic devices, as well as traditional and rhythmic prose. He collaborates with German publishers and , at the same time contributing as a reviewer, observer and columnist to leading German-language media, including
Die Zeit,
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,
Frankfurter Rundschau,
Neues Deutschland,
Süddeutsche Zeitung,
The European (Germany),
Neue Zürcher Zeitung,
WOZ Die Wochenzeitung (Switzerland). He is the author of several short prose books and collections of journalism:
Utterances of a Russian (2019),
Statements on the Cultural Sector (2019),
Stories of Langenthal Words (2021),
The Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Soul (2021),
Lime Legends (2022),
The Rondell (2022),
Escapes (2022),
BUGS (2024),
In the Beginning Was Nonsense (2025),
Henchman State Russia (2025). His prosaic works, translations, critical and philological articles have been published in
Sinn und Form (Germany), '
(Austria), ' (Switzerland), '
, ',
Nezavisimaya Gazeta (Russia) and other noted literary magazines and newspapers. Alexander Estis is a member of the and the German . He has won several literary prizes and grants, including the (Germany, 2020), the (Switzerland, 2020–2021), the
Dortmund (Germany, 2022), the
Kurt Tucholsky Prize (Germany, 2023), and the
Dresden Stadtschreiber Prize (Germany, 2025). == Family ==