Isabel Cole
   
 

Born 1973 in Galena, Illinois, USA
  Education
April 1996 to March 2001 Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany, enrolled as student of Russian Philology and Modern German Literature. From August 1993 to March 1994 I studied at the Humboldt-Universität through the Institute for European Studies.
October 1991 to June 1995 University of Chicago, Chicago, USA, graduated with honors in June, 1995 with a B.A. in General Studies in the Humanities (History, Literature and Philosophy). I wrote my B.A. thesis on the Soviet writers Yevgeny Zamyatin and Mikhail Bulgakov. As a first-year student, I participated in Richard Stern's fiction writing class.
September 1985 to June 1991 Hunter College High School, New York City, USA.
   
  Projects
March 2008

Organized and led a Scots-Franconian dialect poetry translation workshop in cooperation with the Goethe Institute and the Stanza Poetry Festival as part of the no man's land project.
July 2008 Presentation of no man's land with a talk and a reading at the "Dzanc Books/SLS Symposium on International Literature", St. Petersburg, Russia.
January 2006 - present Initiator of the project "no man's land" in cooperation with the literary magazine lauter niemand with the support of the Hauptstadt-Kulturfonds and the Goethe Institute. no man's land now takes the form of an online magazine for new German literature in English translation.
August 2004 Founding member of the literary association "lauter niemand e. V."; 2006 - 2008 co-editor of the magazine lauter niemand and co-organizer of the "Literaturlabor".
February 2003 Founding member of "Americans in Berlin Against the War", later "American Voices Abroad Berlin".
   
  Grants/Workshops/Conferences
June 2009 Prenzlauer Berg Literature Prize, 3rd place for the story "Natascha nascha".
(German text can be downloaded here)
March 2007 Internationales Übersetzertreffen, Berlin/Leipzig, Germany.
February 2006 Wolfenbüttler Übersetzergespräche, Wolfenbüttel. Participated in translators' conference; presented translation of Hermann Ungar.
June 2005 Summer Literary Seminars, St. Petersburg, Russia. Partial scholarship. Attended literary workshop headed by Stephen Elliot.
May 2004 Künstlerhaus Lukas, Ahrenshoop, Germany. Work stay at the Künstlerhaus Lukas sponsored by the foundation StiftungKulturfonds. Project: collection of Hermann Ungar's short stories, published by Twisted Spoon Press in 2006.
August 2003 Literarisches Colloquium Berlin, Berlin, Germany. Attended "LCB Summer Academy" for translators from the German.
June-July 2001 Summer Literary Seminars, St. Petersburg, Russia. Partial scholarship. Attended literary workshops by Maxine Chernoff and Ron Carlson.
   
  Work Experience
2004 - present lauter niemand e. V., Berlin, Germany. Co-editor of the literary magazine lauter niemand and co-organizer of its weekly open-mike session; initiator and coordinator of the 2006 project no man's land, a magazine of young German literature in English translation in cooperation with lauter niemand e. V. and sponsored by the Berlin Senate for Culture.
1999 to present Freelance translator/editor, Berlin, Germany. Customers include the Fischer-Verlag, the German Film Institute, the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum, the Jewish Museum Berlin, the Kerber Verlag, Litrix.de, the Martin-Gropius-Bau, the Max-Planck-Institute, the Neue Nationalgalerie, Qantara.de and the Wienand Verlag.
June - September 1994 Tor Books, St. Martin's Press, New York City, USA. Editorial Assistant. From June 1990 to September 1991 and in the summer of 1992 I worked at Tor Books as an intern. Through March, 1997 I read submissions on a freelance basis.