Philip Boehm (born 1958) is an American playwright, theater director and literary translator. Born in Texas, he was educated at

Wesleyan University Wesleyan University ( ) is a Private university, private liberal arts college, liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831 as a Men's colleges in the United States, men's college under the auspices of the Methodist Epis ...

Washington University in St. Louis Washington University in St. Louis (WashU or WUSTL) is a private research university with its main campus in St. Louis County, and Clayton, Missouri. Founded in 1853, the university is named after George Washington. Washington University is r ...

, and the State Academy of Theater in Warsaw, Poland. Boehm is the founder o
Upstream Theater
in

St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

, Upstream Theater. About
Upstream Theater, Kranzberg Arts Center, St. Louis, MO. which has become known for its productions of foreign plays. Fluent in English, German and Polish, he has directed plays in

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

and

Slovakia Slovakia (; sk, Slovensko ), officially the Slovak Republic ( sk, Slovenská republika, links=no ), is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the s ...

. His own written work includes several plays such as ''Mixtitlan'', ''Soul of a Clone'', ''Alma en venta'', ''The Death of Atahualpa'' and ''Return of the Bedbug''. Boehm has translated over thirty novels and plays by German and Polish writers, including

Herta Müller Herta Müller (; born 17 August 1953) is a Romanian-born German novelist, poet, essayist and recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Nițchidorf (german: Nitzkydorf, link=no), Timiș County in Romania, her native language is G ...

Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It ...

and

Hanna Krall Hanna Krall (born 1935), is a Polish writer with a degree in journalism from the University of Warsaw, specializing among other subjects in the history of the Holocaust in occupied Poland. Personal life Krall is of Jewish origin, the daughter of S ...

. Nonfiction translations include ''A Woman in Berlin'' and ''Words to Outlive Us: Eyewitness Accounts from the Warsaw Ghetto.'' For these translations he has received fellowships from the NEA and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, as well as several awards including the

Schlegel-Tieck Prize The Schlegel-Tieck Prize for German Translation is a literary translation award given by the Society of Authors in London. Translations from the German original into English are considered for the prize. The value of the prize is £3,000.

, the

Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize is an annual literary prize for any book-length translation into English from any other living European language. The first prize was awarded in 1999. The prize is funded by and named in honour of Lord Weidenfe ...

, the

Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize The Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize is an annual literary prize named for the German–American publishers Helen and Kurt Wolff "honoring an outstanding literary translation from German into English" published in the USA the previous year ...

, and the Ungar German Translation Award.

Selected translations and adaptations

* Anonymous: ''A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary'' (

, ATA Ungar Award) *

Ingeborg Bachmann Ingeborg Bachmann (25 June 1926 – 17 October 1973) was an Austrian poet and author. Biography Bachmann was born in Klagenfurt, in the Austrian state of Carinthia, the daughter of Olga (née Haas) and Matthias Bachmann, a schoolteacher. Her fa ...

: '' Malina'' * Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz: '' The Passenger'' *

Bertolt 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 ...

: ''In the Jungle of the City'' (play) *

Georg Büchner Karl Georg Büchner (17 October 1813 – 19 February 1837) was a German dramatist and writer of poetry and prose, considered part of the Young Germany movement. He was also a revolutionary and the brother of physician and philosopher Ludwig Büchn ...

: ''Woyzeck (adaptation)'' (play) *

Stefan Chwin Stefan Chwin (born 11 April 1949 in Gdańsk) is a Polish novelist, literary critic, and historian of literature whose life and literary work is closely linked to his hometown. He holds a post of Literature Professor at the University of Gdansk ...

: ''Death in Danzig'' (Soeurette Diehl Fraser Award) *

Ida Fink Ida Fink ( he, אידה פינק, 1 November 1921 – 27 September 2011) was a Polish-born Israeli author who wrote about the Holocaust in Polish. Biography Ida Fink was born as Ida Landau in Zbaraż, Poland (now Zbarazh, Ukraine) on 1 Novemb ...

: ''Traces: Stories'' (co-translator:

Francine Prose Francine Prose (born April 1, 1947) is an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and critic. She is a visiting professor of literature at Bard College, and was formerly president of PEN American Center. Life and career Born in Brookl ...

) *

Aleksander Fredro Aleksander Fredro (20 June 1793 – 15 July 1876) was a Polish poet, playwright and author active during Polish Romanticism in the period of partitions by neighboring empires. His works including plays written in the octosyllabic verse ('' Zemst ...

: ''Sweet Revenge'' (play) *

Wilhelm Genazino Wilhelm Genazino (22 January 1943 – 12 December 2018) was a German journalist and author. He worked first as a journalist for the satirical magazine '' pardon'' and for ''Lesezeichen''. From the early 1970s, he was a freelance writer who became ...

: ''The Shoe Tester of Frankfurt'' * Michal Grynberg, ed.: ''Words to Outlive Us: Eyewitness Accounts from the Warsaw Ghetto'' *

Christoph Hein Christoph Hein (; born 8 April 1944) is a German author and translator. He grew up in the village Bad Düben near Leipzig. Being a clergyman's son and thus not allowed to attend the Erweiterte Oberschule in the GDR, he received secondary educat ...

: ''Settlement'' *

: ''Willenbrock'' *

: ''The Tango Player'' *

Anna Janko Anna Janko (born Aneta Jankowska, 27 August 1957), is a Polish people, Polish poet, writer, columnist and literary critic. Life Aneta Jankowska was born in Rybnik, in the Silesian Voivodeship, Poland, 27 August 1957. She is the daughter of Teresa ...

: ''A Little Annihilation'' *

: ''

Letters to Milena ''Letters to Milena'' is a book collecting some of Franz Kafka's letters to Milena Jesenská from 1920 to 1923. Publication history The letters were originally published in German in 1952 as ''Briefe an Milena'', edited by Willy Haas, who decided ...

'' *

Arthur Koestler Arthur Koestler, (, ; ; hu, Kösztler Artúr; 5 September 1905 – 1 March 1983) was a Hungarian-born author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria. In 1931, Koestler join ...

: ''

Darkness at Noon ''Darkness at Noon'' (german: link=no, Sonnenfinsternis) is a novel by Hungarian-born novelist Arthur Koestler, first published in 1940. His best known work, it is the tale of Rubashov, an Old Bolshevik who is arrested, imprisoned, and tried f ...

'' (American Translators Association's Ungar German Translation Award) *

: ''Chasing the King of Hearts'' (

Found in Translation Award The Found in Translation Award is an annual award for the best translation of Polish literature into English. The award is given to the translator(s) who also receive a cash prize of PLN 16,000. The Award was established by the Polish Book Institu ...

, PEN Los Angeles Award, Soeurette Diehl Fraser Award) * Lucía Laragione: ''Cooking with Elisa'' (play) *

: ''The Fox Was Ever The Hunter'' *

: ''The Hunger Angel'' (

National Translation Award The National Translation Award is awarded annually by the American Literary Translators Association for literary translators who have made an outstanding contribution to literature in English by masterfully recreating the artistic force of a book o ...

, ATA Ungar Award) *

: ''The Appointment'' (co-translator:

Michael Hulse Michael Hulse (born 1955) is an English poet, translator and critic, notable especially for his translations of German novels by W. G. Sebald, Herta Müller, and Elfriede Jelinek. Life and works Hulse was educated locally in Stoke-on-Trent unt ...

) *

Albert Ostermaier Albert may refer to: Companies * Albert (supermarket), a supermarket chain in the Czech Republic * Albert Heijn, a supermarket chain in the Netherlands * Albert Market, a street market in The Gambia * Albert Productions, a record label * Albert ...

: ''Infected'' (play) * Minka Pradelski: ''Here Comes Mrs. Kugelman'' *

Rafik Schami Rafik is the given name of: *Rafik Al-Hariri (1944–2005), business tycoon, former Prime Minister of Lebanon *Rafik Bouderbal (born 1987), French-born Algerian player currently playing for ES Sétif in the Algerian Championnat National *Rafik Deg ...

: ''Damascus Nights'' * Peter Schneider: ''Couplings: A Novel'' * Peter Schneider: ''The German Comedy'' (co-translator: Leigh Hafrey) * Tilman Spengler: ''Spinal Discord: One Man's Wrenching Tale of Woe in Twenty-Four (Vertebral) Segments'' *

Ilija Trojanow Ilija Trojanow (Bulgarian: Илия Троянов, also transliterated as Ilya Troyanov; born 23 August 1965 in Sofia) is a Bulgarian–German writer, translator and publisher. Life and literary career Trojanow was born in Sofia, Bulgaria in 1 ...

: ''The Lamentations of Zeno'' * Ingmar Villqist: ''Helver's Night'' (play) *

Gregor von Rezzori Gregor von Rezzori (; May 13, 1914 – April 23, 1998), born Gregor Arnulph Herbert Hilarius von Rezzori d’Arezzo, was an Austrian-born, Romanian, German-language novelist, memoirist, screenwriter and author of radio plays, as well as an actor, ...

: ''An Ermine in Czernopol'' (

, PEN USA Award) * Christine Wunnicke: ''The Fox and Dr. Shimamura'' (

)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Boehm, Philip 1958 births German–English translators People from Texas American artists Living people