Karen Leeder (born 1962) is a British writer, translator and scholar of

German culture The culture of Germany has been shaped by major intellectual and popular currents in Europe, both religious and secular. Historically, Germany has been called ''Das Land der Dichter und Denker'' (the country of poets and thinkers). German cultu ...

. She is professor of Modern German Literature in the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

. In 2021 she was elected as Schwarz-Taylor Professor of the German Language and Literature, a position she took up at The

Queen's College, Oxford The Queen's College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford, England. The college was founded in 1341 by Robert de Eglesfield in honour of Philippa of Hainault. It is distinguished by its predominantly neoclassical architecture, ...

in 2022.

Early life and education

Born in Derbyshire, she lived in Rugby and attended

Rugby High School Rugby High School is a public high school located in Rugby, North Dakota. It is a part of Rugby Public Schools. The athletic teams are known as the Panthers. Rugby High serves Rugby, Balta, Barton, and Orrin in Pierce County, and Knox in Be ...

and

Rugby School Rugby School is a public school (English independent boarding school for pupils aged 13–18) in Rugby, Warwickshire, England. Founded in 1567 as a free grammar school for local boys, it is one of the oldest independent schools in Britain. Up ...

. She studied German at

Magdalen College, Oxford Magdalen College (, ) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. It was founded in 1458 by William of Waynflete. Today, it is the fourth wealthiest college, with a financial endowment of £332.1 million as of 2019 and one of the s ...

and the

University of Hamburg The University of Hamburg (german: link=no, Universität Hamburg, also referred to as UHH) is a public research university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by combining the previous General Lecture System ('' Allgemeines Vor ...

Career

She taught at

Emmanuel College, Cambridge Emmanuel College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay, Chancellor of the Exchequer to Elizabeth I. The site on which the college sits was once a priory for Dominican mon ...

for three years as Official Fellow in German, from 1990 before taking up a post as a Fellow at

New College, Oxford New College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1379 by William of Wykeham in conjunction with Winchester College as its feeder school, New College is one of the oldest colleges at th ...

in 1993. Her interests include post-war German literature, the literature of the GDR, German poetry in translation, Brecht, Rilke, spectres and angels. From 1993 to 2022 she was Fellow in German at New College Oxford. In 2021 she was elected as Schwarz-Taylor Professor of the German Language and Literature, a position she took up at The

in 2022. She is professor of Modern German Literature in the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

. In 2023 she embarks on a three-year Einstein fellowship at the

Free University of Berlin The Free University of Berlin (, often abbreviated as FU Berlin or simply FU) is a public research university in Berlin, Germany. It is consistently ranked among Germany's best universities, with particular strengths in political science and t ...

on the project AfterWords. In 2017 she became a Fellow of the

Royal Society of Arts The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), also known as the Royal Society of Arts, is a London-based organisation committed to finding practical solutions to social challenges. The RSA acronym is used m ...

and in 2020 she was elected to the

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of Humanities, Letters, Law, and Sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europea ...

. She is a translator, and she has won prizes for her translations of

Volker Braun Volker Braun (born 7 May 1939 in Dresden) is a German writer. His works include ''Provokation für mich'' (''Provocation for me'') – a collection of poems written between 1959 and 1964 and published in 1965, a play, ''Die Kipper'' (''The Dumpers ...

, Evelyn Schlag,

Durs Grünbein Durs Grünbein (born 1962) is a German poet and essayist. Life and career Durs Grünbein was born and grew up in Dresden. He studied Theater Studies in East Berlin, to which he moved in 1985. Since the Peaceful Revolution nonviolently toppled ...

and

Ulrike Almut Sandig Ulrike Almut Sandig (born 1979) is a German writer. She was born in Großenhain in the former GDR, and has lived in Riesa, Leipzig and Berlin. She studied religion and indology at university, and then studied at the German Institute for Literatur ...

. She has published widely on German culture, including several volumes on

Rilke René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), shortened to Rainer Maria Rilke (), was an Austrian poet and novelist. He has been acclaimed as an idiosyncratic and expressive poet, and is widely recogni ...

and

Brecht Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a pl ...

. With Christopher Young and Michael Eskin, she was commissioning editor for the de Gruyter series of Companions to Contemporary German Culture (2012–2022).

Publications

* Breaking Boundaries: A New Generation of Poets in the GDR (OUP, 1996). * With Tom Kuhn, The Young Brecht (London: Libris, 1992, paperback 1996) * Editor, with Tom Kuhn, Empedocles’ Shoe: Essays on Brecht's poetry (London: Methuen, 2002) * Editor, with Erdmut Wizisla, O Chicago! O Widerspruch!: Ein Hundert Gedichte auf Brecht (Berlin: Transit, 2006) * Editor, Schaltstelle: Neue deutsche Lyrik im Dialog, German Monitor 69 (Amsterdam, Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 2007) * Editor, Flaschenpost: German Poetry and the Long Twentieth Century, Special Edition of German Life and Letters (GLL, LX, No. 3, 2007) * Editor, From Stasiland to Ostalgie. The GDR Twenty Years After, A special edition of Oxford German Studies, OGS, 38.3 (Oxford, 2009) * Editor, with Robert Vilain, The Cambridge Companion to Rilke (Cambridge: CUP, 2009) * Editor, with Robert Vilain, Nach Duino: Studien zu Rainer Maria Rilkes späten Gedichten (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2009) * Editor, with Laura Bradley, Brecht & the GDR: Politics, Culture, Posterity, Edinburgh German Yearbook, vol. 5 (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2011) * Editor, with Michael Eskin and Christopher Young, Durs Grünbein: A Companion (Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 2013) * Editor, Figuring Lateness in Modern German Culture, special edition of New German Critique, 42.1, 125, (2015) * Editor, Rereading East Germany: The Literature and Film of the GDR (Cambridge: CUP, 2016, paperback 2019) * Editor, with Lyn Marven, Ulrike Draesner: A Companion (Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 2022)

Translations

* Michael Krüger, ''Scenes from the Life of a Best-selling Author'', trans. Leeder (London: Harvill, 2002; pbk. Vintage, 2004). *

Raoul Schrott Raoul Schrott (born 17 January 1964) is an Austrian poet, writer, literary critic, translator and broadcast personality. Schrott was raised in Tunis where his father served as an Austrian sales representative. He attended the universities of N ...

, ''The Desert of Lop'', trans. Leeder (London: Macmillan Picador, 2004). * Evelyn Schlag, ''Selected Poems'', ed. and trans. by Leeder (Manchester: Carcanet, 2004). Winner of Schlegel Tieck Prize for Translation 2005. *

Hans Magnus Enzensberger Hans Magnus Enzensberger (11 November 1929 – 24 November 2022) was a German author, poet, translator, and editor. He also wrote under the pseudonyms Andreas Thalmayr, Elisabeth Ambras, Linda Quilt and Giorgio Pellizzi. Enzensberger was regarde ...

, ''Fatal Numbers: Why count on Chance?'', trans. by Leeder (New York: Upper West Side Philosophers, 2011). Shortlisted for

National Book Critics Circle Award The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English".Wilhelm Schmid, ''High on Low: Harnessing the Power of Unhappiness'', trans. by Leeder (New York: Upper West Side Philosophers, 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) *

, ''Rubble Flora: Selected Poems'', trans. by

David Constantine David John Constantine (born 1944) is an English poet, author and translator. Background Born in Salford, Constantine read Modern Languages at Wadham College, Oxford, and was a Fellow of The Queen's College, Oxford, until 2000, when he became a ...

and Leeder (Calcutta, London, New York: Seagull, 2014). Commended for Popescu Poetry Translation Prize 2015. * Michael Krüger, ''Last Day of the Year: Selected Poems'', trans. Leeder (New York, London: Sheep Meadow, 2014). *

, ''Thick of it'', trans. Leeder (Calcutta, London, New York: Seagull, 2018). * Evelyn Schlag, ''All Under One Roof'', trans. Leeder (Manchester, Carcanet, 2018). *

, ''The Sex of the Angel: The Saints in their Heaven: A Breviary'', trans. by Leeder (London, New York: Seagull, 2018) *

, ''Grimm'', trans. by Leeder (Oxford: Hurst Street, 2018), special limited edition with illustrations. * Michael Krüger, ''The God behind the Window'', trans. by Leeder and Peter Thompson (London, New York: Seagull, 2019). *

Gerd Ludwig Gerd Ludwig (birth name Gerhard Erich Ludwig, born March 17, 1947, in Alsfeld, Hesse, Germany) is a German-American documentary photographer and photojournalist. Biography Gerd Ludwig initially studied German literature, political science, and ph ...

, Evelyn Schlag, Leeder, ''I LOVE AFRICA'', Festival La Gacilly-Baden Photo 2018 (Baden: Lammerhuber, 2019). * Michael Krüger, ''Postscript'', trans. by Leeder (New York, Sheep Meadow, 2019). *

, ''I am a field full of rapeseed give cover to deer and shine like thirteen oil paintings laid one on top of the other'', trans. by Leeder (Calcutta, New York, London: Seagull, 2020). *

, '' Porcelain: Poem on the Downfall of my City'', trans. by Leeder (Calcutta, New York, London: Seagull, 2020). *

, ''For the Dying Calves. Beyond Literature. Oxford Lectures'', trans. by Leeder (Calcutta, New York, London: Seagull, 2021). *

,''Monsters Like Us'', trans. by Leeder (Calcutta, New York, London: Seagull, 2022). *

, ''Great Fugue'', trans. by Leeder and

(Ripon: Smokestack, 2022).

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', 2014, Berlin (Ulrike Almut Sandig) * 2014 Robert Bosch Stiftung/Goethe Institut: 'Frühling der Barbaren. Deutschsprachige Literatur aktuell' 2014 (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, 2018 * 2021 Winner of Schlegel-Tieck Prize for Durs Grünbein, ''Porcelain: Poem on the Downfall of my City'', trans. by Leeder (Seagull, 2021).

References

External links

*
Mediating Modern Poetry
' – her website {{DEFAULTSORT:Leeder, Karen 1962 births Living people German–English translators People educated at Rugby High School for Girls Alumni of Magdalen College, Oxford Fellows of New College, Oxford Fellows of The Queen's College, Oxford German literature academics