Karen Leeder


Karen Leeder is a British writer, translator and scholar of German culture. From 1993 she was Fellow of German at New College, Oxford and Professor of Modern German Literature in the University of Oxford. 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 in 2022.

Early life and education

Born in Derbyshire, she lived in Rugby and attended Rugby High School and Rugby School. She studied German at Magdalen College, Oxford and the University of Hamburg.

Career

Leeder taught at Emmanuel College, Cambridge for three years as Official Fellow in German, 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, Brecht, Rilke, spectres and angels, translation.
From 1993 to 2022, Leeder 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 Queen's College, Oxford in 2022. In 2023 she embarked on a three-year Einstein fellowship at the Free University of Berlin on the project AfterWords.
In 2017 she became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and in 2020 she was elected to the Academia Europaea.
She is a 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 was commissioning editor for the de Gruyter series of Companions to Contemporary German Culture.
In 2025, Leeder was awarded the Griffin Poetry Prize for her translation of Grünbein’s collection Psyche Running: Selected Poems 2005-2022.

Publications

  • Breaking Boundaries: A New Generation of Poets in the GDR.
  • With Tom Kuhn, The Young Brecht
  • Editor, with Tom Kuhn, Empedocles’ Shoe: Essays on Brecht's poetry
  • Editor, with Erdmut Wizisla, O Chicago! O Widerspruch!: Ein Hundert Gedichte auf Brecht
  • Editor, Schaltstelle: Neue deutsche Lyrik im Dialog, German Monitor 69
  • Editor, Flaschenpost: German Poetry and the Long Twentieth Century, Special Edition of German Life and Letters
  • Editor, From Stasiland to Ostalgie. The GDR Twenty Years After, A special edition of Oxford German Studies, OGS, 38.3
  • Editor, with Robert Vilain, The Cambridge Companion to Rilke
  • Editor, with Robert Vilain, Nach Duino: Studien zu Rainer Maria Rilkes späten Gedichten
  • Editor, with Laura Bradley, Brecht & the GDR: Politics, Culture, Posterity, Edinburgh German Yearbook, vol. 5
  • Editor, with Michael Eskin and Christopher Young, Durs Grünbein: A Companion
  • Editor, Figuring Lateness in Modern German Culture, special edition of New German Critique, 42.1, 125,
  • Editor, Rereading East Germany: The Literature and Film of the GDR
  • Editor, with Michale Eskin and Marko Pajevic, Paul Celan Today
  • Editor, with Lyn Marven, Ulrike Draesner: A Companion

Translations

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
  • 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
  • 2014 Robert Bosch Stiftung/Goethe Institut: 'Frühling der Barbaren. Deutschsprachige Literatur aktuell' 2014
  • 2014–15 Knowledge Exchange Fellow, University of Oxford/Southbank Centre, London
  • 2015 Translation of High on Low Winner of Independent Publisher Book Award for Self Help, Named Finalist for a Next Generation Indie Book Award for Self Help ; Gold Medal and Winner of Living Now Book Award for Personal Growth
  • 2016 English PEN, EUNIC, European Literature Festival, New European Literature Translation pitch overall winner for translations of Ulrike Almut Sandig Thick of it
  • 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.