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Michael HofmannPoet and literary translator of German origin
Country:
 Germany |
Content:
Biography of Michael Hofmann
Michael Hofmann, a German-born poet and literary translator, was born in 1957 in Freiburg, West Germany. He is the son of German novelist Gert Hofmann. In 1961, his family moved to Bristol and later to Edinburgh. Hofmann received his education at Winchester College and went on to study English literature and classics at the University of Oxford. He obtained a bachelor's degree in 1979 and a master's degree in 1984 from the University of Cambridge.
Early Career
In 1983, Hofmann began working as a freelance writer, translator, and literary critic. He gained recognition for his translations of works by authors such as Patrick Süskind and Wolfgang Koeppen, earning the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for his translations of "The Double-Bass" and "Death in Rome." Hofmann also received the Cholmondeley Award in 1984 for his poetry collection "Nights in the Iron Hotel" and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1988 for his work "Acrimony."
Later Career and Achievements
After teaching at the University of Michigan, Hofmann continues to conduct poetry seminars at the University of Florida. He splits his time between London and Gainesville. In 2008, he was appointed as a poet-in-residence in Queensland, Australia. Hofmann received the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 1995 for his translation of his father's novel "The Film Explainer" and was nominated for the same prize in 2003 for his translation of Peter Stephan Jungk's "The Snowflake Constant." He also won the Arts Council Writer's Award in 1997 for his poetry collection "Approximately Nowhere" and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 1998 for his translation of Herta Müller's "Land of Green Plums."
Throughout his career, Hofmann has been recognized for his remarkable translations. He received the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize in 1999 for his translation of Joseph Roth's "The String of Pearls" and the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize in 2000 for his translation of Roth's "Die Rebellion." He was also the recipient of the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize in 2004 for his translation of Ernst Jünger's memoir "Storm of Steel" and the Schlegel-Tieck Prize on three separate occasions.
Recent Work
As of 2009, Hofmann's latest translation work is the book "Alone in Berlin" by Hans Fallada.
