was born in Berlin. From 1982 to 1989 she studied literature and art history as well as chemical sciences at the Technical University of Berlin. In 1989 she moved to Hanover.

Geist worked as a reviewer and editorial journalist, f. e. for Financial Times Germany, and as an editor for middle east European literature. Furthermore she conceptualised and moderated several literary and interdisciplinary colloquia, f.e. in association with the University of Applied Sciences in Hanover.

In her work science and poetry constantly seem to reflect each other. She has published seven volumes of poetry, including two bibliophilic books, and two volumes of prose. She is also known as a translator; poems by Peter Gizzi, Chirikure Chirikure and contemporary poetry from Southafrica i.e. has been published in her translation. Short prose and poems of Geist have been translated into more various languages, f. e. into English, French, Polish, Russian and Arabic.

She has received numerous awards for her work, including the Advancement Award of Lower Saxony (1998), the Meran Poetry Prize (2002), a fellowship at the Künstlerhaus Edenkoben (2006), an annual scholarship of the Ministry for Sciences and Culture of the Lower Saxony (2006), the Adolf Mejstrik Award of the German Schiller Foundation (2008), a Sylt-Quelle residential fellowship (2010), a Villa Decius residential fellowship in Krakow (2015), the Ver.di Literature Prize (2014) and the fellowship of the Rainer Malkowski Prize (2018).

She is member of PEN-Zentrum Deutschland since 2017.

Today she lives in the Uckermark and in Vancouver.