Karen Leeder

Karen Leeder (1962) is a writer, translator and leading British scholar of German culture. She is professor of Modern German Literature in the University of Oxford and from 2016-2017 Associate Head of the Humanities Division, University of Oxford. In 2017 she became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Life

Born in Derbyshire, she lived in Rugby and attended Rugby High School and Rugby School. She studied German at Magdalen College, Oxford University and the University of Hamburg. She taught at Emmanuel College, Cambridge for three years from 1990 before taking up a post as a Fellow at New College, Oxford in 1993. Her interests include post-war German literature, the literature of the GDR, German poetry in translation, Brecht, Rilke, spectres and angels. She is an award-winning translator, and she has won prizes for her translations of Volker Braun, Evelyn Schlag, Durs Grünbein and Ulrike Almut Sandig. She has published widely on German culture, including several volumes on Rilke and Brecht. With Christopher Young and Michael Eskin, she is commissioning editor for the de Gruyter series of Companions to Contemporary German Culture. Her website Mediating Modern Poetry [1] documents some of her recent activities. She is married to philosopher and journalist Peter Thompson and has one daughter, Rosa.

Books

• Editor, Rereading East Germany: The Literature and Film of the GDR (Cambridge: CUP, 2016)
• Editor, Figuring Lateness in Modern German Culture, special edition of New German Critique, 42.1, 125, (2015)
• Editor, with Michael Eskin and Christopher Young, Durs Grünbein: A Companion (Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 2013)
• Editor, with Laura Bradley, Brecht & the GDR: Politics, Culture, Posterity, Edinburgh German Yearbook, vol. 5 (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2011)
• Editor, with Robert Vilain, Nach Duino: Studien zu Rainer Maria Rilkes späten Gedichten (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2009)
• Editor, with Robert Vilain, The Cambridge Companion to Rilke (Cambridge: CUP, 2009)
• Editor, From Stasiland to Ostalgie. The GDR Twenty Years After, A special edition of Oxford German Studies, OGS, 38.3 (Oxford, 2009)
• Editor, Flaschenpost: German Poetry and the Long Twentieth Century, Special Edition of German Life and Letters (GLL, LX, No. 3, 2007)
• Editor, Schaltstelle: Neue deutsche Lyrik im Dialog, German Monitor 69 (Amsterdam, Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 2007)
• Editor, with Erdmut Wizisla, O Chicago! O Widerspruch!: Ein Hundert Gedichte auf Brecht (Berlin: Transit, 2006)
• Editor, with Tom Kuhn, Empedocles’ Shoe: Essays on Brecht's poetry (London: Methuen, 2002)
• With Tom Kuhn, The Young Brecht (London: Libris, 1992, paperback 1996)
• Breaking Boundaries: A New Generation of Poets in the GDR (OUP, 1996).

Translations

• Evelyn Schlag, All Under One Roof, trans. Karen Leeder (Manchester, Carcanet, 2018).
• Ulrike Almut Sandig, Thick of it, trans. Karen Leeder (Calcutta, London, New York: Seagull Books, 2018).
• Michael Krüger, Last Day of the Year: Selected Poems, trans. Karen Leeder (New York, London: Sheep Meadow, 2014).
• Volker Braun, Rubble Flora: Selected Poems, trans. by David Constantine and Karen Leeder (Calcutta, London, New York: Seagull Books September 2014). Commended for Popescu Poetry Translation Prize 2015.
• Wilhelm Schmid, High on Low: Harnessing the Power of Unhappiness, trans. by Karen Leeder (New York: Upper West Side Philosophers Press, 2014). Winner of Independent Publisher Book Award for Self Help (2015), Named Finalist for a Next Generation Indie Book Award for Self Help (2015); Gold Medal and Winner of Living Now Book Award (2015)
• Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Fatal Numbers: Why count on Chance?, trans. by Karen Leeder (New York: Upper West Side Philosophers Press, 2011). Shortlisted for National Book Critics Circle Award 2011.
• Evelyn Schlag, Selected Poems, ed. and trans. by Karen Leeder (Manchester: Carcanet Press, 2004). Winner of Schlegel Tieck Prize for Translation 2005.
• Raoul Schrott, The Desert of Lop, trans. Karen Leeder (London: Macmillan Picador, 2004).
• Michael Krüger, Scenes from the Life of a Best-selling Author, trans. Karen Leeder (London: Harvill press, 2002; pbk. Vintage 2004).

Prizes

• 2000 Literarisches Colloquium Berlin summer school scholarship
• 2002 One month Writer in Residence LCB.
• 2005 Winner of Schlegel Tieck Prize for Evelyn Schlag Selected Poems (Carcanet 2004)
• 2013 Winner of Times Stephen Spender Prize for Durs Grünbein, ‘Childhood in the Diorama’
• 2014 Deutsche Übersetzerfonds/Goethe Institut: ‘ViceVersa: Deutsch-Englische Übersetzerwerkstatt im LCB’, January 2014, Berlin (Ulrike Almut Sandig)
• 2014 Robert Bosch Stiftung/Goethe Institut: ‘Frühling der Barbaren. Deutschsprachige Literatur aktuell’ March 2914 (Berlin, Leipzig)
• 2014-15 Knowledge Exchange Fellow, University of Oxford/Southbank Centre, London
• 2015 Translation of High on Low (Upper West Side philosophers’ Inc., 2014) Winner of Independent Publisher Book Award for Self Help (2015), Named Finalist for a Next Generation Indie Book Award for Self Help (2015); Gold Medal and Winner of Living Now Book Award for Personal Growth (2015)
• 2016 English PEN, EUNIC, European Literature Festival, New European Literature Translation pitch overall winner for translations of Ulrike Almut Sandig Thick of it (2016)
• 2016 American PEN PEN/Heim Translation award for Ulrike Almut Sandig, Thick of it
• 2017 The John Frederick Nims Memorial Prize for Translation for Durs Grünbein, 'The Doctrine of Photography' Poetry, December 2017 [2]