Karen Leeder (born 1962) is Professor of Modern German Literature and Fellow and Tutor in German at New College, Oxford. As an academic she had published widely on modern German poetry, with volumes on Brecht, Rilke, contemporary German poetry and, most recently, Durs Grünbein:
A Companion (2013). She has also translated work by a number of contemporary German poets including Evelyn Schlag, Ulrike Almut Sandig, Durs Grünbein and Volker Braun. In 2005 she won the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for her translation of Austrian poet Evelyn Schlag’s
Selected Poems (Carcanet, 2004) and in 2013 the Times Stephen Spender Prize for her translation of Durs Grünbein. In 2014 she was awarded a Robert Bosch Stiftung award to the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin for her translation of Ulrike Almut Sandig. During 2014-15 she is Knowledge Exchange Fellow with the Southbank Centre, London, where she has curated a series of events on Modern Poetry and Translation and was Translator in Residence for Poetry International 2014.
Selected translations:
- Krüger, Michael: Last Day of the Year: Selected Poems, Sheep Meadow Press, 2014
- Braun, Volker: Rubble Flora: Selected Poems, translated by David Constantine and Karen Leeder Seagull Books, 2014
- Schmid, Wilhelm: High on Low: Harnessing the Power of Unhappiness (Unglücklich Sein: Eine Ermutigung), Upper West Side Philosophers Press, 2014
- Enzensberger, Hans Magnus: Fatal Numbers: Why count on Chance?, Upper West Side Philosophers Press, 2011
- Schrott, Raoul: The Desert of Lop (Die Wüste Lop Nor), Macmillan Picador, 2004
- Schlag, Evelyn: Selected Poems, Carcanet Press, 2004
- Krüger, Michael: Scenes from the Life of a Best-selling Author (Aus dem Leben eines Erfolgsschriftstellers), Harvill Press, 2002