Edmund Keeley

The novelist, essayist, and translator Edmund Keeley was born in Damascus, Syria, to American parents in 1928. He is a graduate of Princeton and Oxford universities. As a graduate of Princeton and Oxford, Keeley taught English, Creative Writing, and Modern Greek Literature at Princeton for forty years. For several years, he served as Director of the Creative Writing Program and the Program in Hellenic Studies. He was a founding member of the Modern Greek Studies Association and served twice as its President. Between 1991-93, he served as President of the American PEN Center, the writers' association, and represented the Center at nine international PEN conferences: in Lugano, Paris, Vienna, Barcelona, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago de Compostela, Perth, Guadalajara, and Edinburgh. He is also a member of the PEN Board of Trustees. Edmund Keeley has written seven novels, numerous essays, and translated a multitude of poetic works, including those of Seferis, Ritsos, Cavafy, Elytis, and Sikelianos. He established and led the Department of Greek Literature at Princeton University for forty years, where he also taught modern Greek literature. A significant portion of his essays focuses on prominent Greek poets. He has been honored numerous times for his writing and translation work. For his first novel, "The Libation," Edmund Keeley was awarded the Rome Prize by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1992, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. For his poetry translations, he received the Columbia Translation Center/PEN Award (1975), the Harold Morton Landon Award from the Academy of American Poets (1980), and the First European Prize for the Translation of Poetry awarded by the European Economic Community (1987). Four of his novels are available in Greek: "The Journals of a Deserted Land," "The Last Summer of Innocence," "The Silent Cry of Memory," and "The Libation," all published by Exandas. Also available is his book "Recreating Paradise - The Greek Journey (1937-1947)," published by Exandas.