education

I grew up in Hertfordshire, England, have a BA in German and Film from the University of East Anglia where W.G. Sebald was my tutor and completed an MA in Applied Linguistics at the University of Surrey in 2008. In the 1990s, I worked as a freelance photographer (people, fashion) in Barcelona and Hamburg before continuing to work in this area and the club scene in Berlin from 1998 onwards.

In 2004, I started working as a freelance translator, first in the area of photography books (e.g. Steidel Museum, Theater der Zeit, Pina Bausch Foundation), later expanding to the arts in general. In 2008, I co-founded Transfiction together with Karen Witthuhn, a collective of translators in the arts scene (e.g. Staatsoper Berlin, Berliner Festspiele, Deutsche Kinemathek, Rolling Stone magazine and the Ruhrtriennale).

For ten years, I ran a reading series in Berlin for works-in-progress called Fiction Canteen. In September 2023, I explored the interface of writing and translating in a workshop for The Reader Berlin featuring the award-winning poet Ghayath Almadhoun.

stipends and residencies

2023: Goethe Institute residency and stipend in Gut Siggen, Ostholstein

2021/22: Working stipends from the German Translator Funds (DÜF)

2017: Residency at Straelen Übersetzerhaus, Nordrhein Westfalen

2015: Residency at the Baltic Translators’ House in Visby, Sweden. Translation project: The Hour Between Dog and Wolf by Silke Scheuermann (Seagull Books, 2018)

2014: Arts OMI residency in upstate New York. Translation project I Have No Regrets by Brigitte Reimann (Seagull Books, 2019).

2010: International Meeting of Translators from German, LCB, Berlin.

professional memberships

I am a member of the Society of Authors, Translators’ Association in London, and PEN Berlin. I write book reports for New Books in German and contributed to the 2023 Austrian issue of Riveter magazine with a portrait of Elfriede Jelinek. The issue can be downloaded for free here. Excerpts of my translations can be found on the YouTube channel, Translators Aloud.