Breon Mitchell (born ''Bert Breon Mitchell''; 1942) is an American scholar, literary translator and bibliographer. He was Professor of Comparative Literature and Germanic Studies, and Director of the

Lilly Library The Lilly Library, located on the campus of Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, is an important rare book and manuscript library in the United States. At its dedication on October 3, 1960, the library contained a collection of 20,000 bo ...

, at

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a state university system, system of Public university, public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. The system has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration o ...

. He was a founding member of the

American Literary Translators Association The American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) is an organization in the United States dedicated to literary translation. ALTA promotes literary translation through its annual ALTA conference and year-round events structured around the creatio ...

and served as President in its early years. He has translated numerous major works from the German by such authors as

Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a novelist and writer from Prague who was Jewish, Austrian, and Czech and wrote in German. He is widely regarded as a major figure of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of Litera ...

(''

The Trial ''The Trial'' () is a novel written by Franz Kafka in 1914 and 1915 and published posthumously on 26 April 1925. One of his best-known works, it tells the story of Josef K., a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, wi ...

''),

Günter Grass Günter Wilhelm Grass (; 16 October 1927 – 13 April 2015) was a German novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, sculptor, and recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature. He was born in the Free City of Danzig (now Gda ...

(''

The Tin Drum ''The Tin Drum'' (, ) is a 1959 novel by Günter Grass, the first book of his Danzig Trilogy. It was adapted into a 1979 film, which won both the 1979 Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1980. To "beat a ti ...

''), Heinrich Böll ('' The Silent Angel''),

Siegfried Lenz Siegfried Lenz (; 17 March 19267 October 2014) was a German writer of novels, short stories and essays, as well as dramas for radio and the theatre. In 2000 he received the Goethe Prize on the 250th Anniversary of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's b ...

('' Selected Stories''), and Uwe Timm ('' Morenga''). Mitchell translated and then revised ''What Must Be Said'' by Grass in April 2012. Among his awards are the ATA’s Ungar Prize, the ALTA Translation Prize, the Kurt and Helen Wolff Prize, the MLA’s Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize, the British Society of Authors’ Schlegel-Tieck Prize, and the Banff Centre’s Linda Gaboriau Prize.

Personal life

Breon Mitchell was born on August 9, 1942 in

Salina, Kansas Salina is a city in and the county seat of Saline County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 46,889. In the early 1800s, the Kanza tribal land reached eastward from the middle of the Kansas Territory. In 1858 ...

to John Charles II and Maxine Mitchell. He survives two brothers, John Charles III and Timothy. He has three children with his wife Lynda: Catherine Smith, Kieron Mitchell, and Kerry Mitchell. Breon lives in Bloomington, Indiana. He retired from

in early 2013, and there received the President's Distinguished Service Medal award. He enjoys collecting rare books.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mitchell, Breon American Germanists Indiana University faculty Indiana University Bloomington Department of German faculty Living people 1942 births Translators of Franz Kafka German–English translators 20th-century American translators