Katrin Askan (born 21 February 1966) is a German author. She was born in East Germany, but in 1986, three years before the changes that finally adumbrated an end to the one-party dictatorship, she managed to escape to the west. A (slightly) fictionalised version of the long build-up to the event and of the escape itself, with a powerful resonance of authenticity, constitutes the core of her 2000 novel "Aus dem Schneider".