Cornelia Funke was born in 1958 in the town of Dorsten in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany to Karl-Heinz and Helmi Funke. As a child, she wanted to become an astronaut and/or a pilot, but then she decided to study pedagogy at the University of Hamburg. After finishing her studies, Funke worked for three years as a social worker. During her social work she focused on working with children who came from deprived backgrounds. She had a stint illustrating books, but soon began writing her own stories, inspired by the sorts of stories that had appealed to the deprived children she had worked with. During the late 1980s and the 1990s, Funke established herself in Germany with two children’s series, namely the fantasy-oriented Gespensterjäger (Ghosthunters) and the Die wilden Hühner (C.H.I.X.) line of books. Funke has been called “the J. K. Rowling” of Germany; although she was highly successful in Germany, the first of her books to be translated into English was Herr der Diebe in 2002. It was subsequently released as The Thief Lord by Scholastic and made it to the number 2 spot on The New York Times Best Seller list. The fantasy novel Dragon Rider (2004) stayed on the New York Times Best Seller list for 78 weeks. Following the success of The Thief Lord and Dragon Rider, her next novel was Inkheart (2003), which won the 2004 BookSense Book of the Year Children’s Literature award. Inkheart was the first part of a trilogy which was continued with Inkspell (2005), which won Funke her second BookSense Book of the Year Children’s Literature award (2006). The trilogy was concluded in Inkdeath (published in Germany in 2007, English version Spring 2008, American version Fall 2008). Cornelia’s fans are sometimes referred to as Funkies.

Funke married printer Rolf Frahm in 1979. Their daughter, Anna, was born in 1989 and soon after their son, Ben, was born in 1994. The family lived in Hamburg for 24 years, until they moved to Beverly Hills in May 2005. In March 2006, Rolf Frahm died of cancer. He was a book printer and had given up his career as an architect to support his wife. Cornelia Funke has been the official patron of the children’s hospice Bethel for dying children since February 2010. Since May 2012 she is one of the German ambassadors of the UN Decade on Biodiversity. Since 2013, she has also been the Official Patron of the charity Ecologia Youth Trust, which helps marginalised children and young people around the world.

Cornelia Funke was voted into the Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people of 2005. In 2006, Funke was awarded the Sakura Medal by the International Students of Japan in the Chapter Book category for her successful book Dragon Rider.

In 2010, Cornelia released the first book in her Mirror worlds series, Reckless, with the sequel, Fearless, published in the US in April 2013. In 2015, the film Ghosthunters on Icy Trails (German original title: “Gespensterjäger”) was released in Germany on 2 April 2015.

In 2017, Funke published The Book No One Ever Read, the first work written by the author first in English, as opposed to being written in German first. Funke calls the picture book her “Inkheart for kindergartners” and also illustrated the book herself.

Early in 2020, Funke stated on her website that she’s in the final stages of writing the fourth installment of the MirrorWorld series. The novel will be called Auf silberner Fährte (On Silver Trail) and be published by October 2020 in Germany. Initially conceived as a trilogy, Funke surprisingly also announced in spring 2020, that a sequel of the Inkworld series called Die Farbe der Rache (The Color of Revenge) will be published by October 2021 in Germany.