Professor Karen Leeder FRSA, MAE

Academic profile

Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages

About

Professor Karen Leeder has published widely on modern German culture, especially of the post-1945 and contemporary periods. Her interests include poetry and the poetic tradition, the literature of the former GDR (East Germany), contemporary German culture, women’s writing, angels, spectres, lateness, afterness, translation, Rilke and Brecht. She is a prize-winning translator of contemporary German literature, including works by Evelyn Schlag, Raoul Schrott, Michael Krüger and Volker Braun.

Professor Leeder was awarded the 2025 Griffin Poetry Prize for her English translation of Psyche Running: Selected Poems 2005–2022 by renowned German poet Durs Grünbein.

Expertise

• Contemporary German literature, film and culture
• German politics and history
• Translation

Selected publications

• Psyche Running: Selected Poems 2005-2022 (2024)
• Re-reading East Germany: The Literature and Film of the GDR 1949-2009 (2016)
• The Cambridge Companion to Rilke (2010)
• From Stasiland to Ostalgie: The GDR Twenty Years After (2009)

Media experience

Professor Karen Leeder appears regularly on television and radio.

Recent media work

• Start the Week: Poetry - reading, writing, editing and translating (BBC Radio 4, 2025)
• Karen Leeder interviewed by Pádraig Ó Tuama (2025)
• Karen Leeder and Durs Grünbein interviewed by Griffin Trustee Sarah Howe (2025)

Languages