Ilsa von Braunfels was born somewhere in Paraguay in 1954. She is the daughter of absolutely, totally, and utterly voluntarily emigrated Germans. At the age of nineteen, she returned to her parents' Swabian home, settling in Stuttgart where she has since been studying German philology, for 78 semesters and counting. Asked by a journalist about the duration of her studies, the author answered that it was simply impossible to understand the literary achievements of the German people in less than a lifetime. She is sharing her life with her husband Klaus, their son Arndt, and their German sheep dog, Eva. In her spare time, Ilsa likes visiting German folk music concerts and participating in goose step hiking, a discipline in which she has been German champion twice already. Ilsa likes traveling and has visited Antarctica several times.