Contact info: neilblackadder@yahoo.com, (309) 299-0184
Alternative email address: nmblackadder@knox.edu
Representation: Antje Oegel, AOInternational

Neil Blackadder retired in 2019 as Professor of Theatre at Knox College, where he had taught since 1998. He began translating drama and short fiction in 2002. In 2004, he was certified as a German > English translator by the American Translators Association. Neil is also the author of Performing Opposition: Modern Theater and the Scandalized Audience (Praeger, 2003). In spring 2023, Neil held the position of Translator in Residence at Princeton University.

Neil grew up in Whitehaven, in the Lake District area of England. He completed a BA in German and French at the University of London, Goldsmiths’ College – including full years spent in both Paris and Tübingen. In 1987 he came to the US to study Comparative Literature, first at UCLA (M.A.), then at Princeton (Ph.D.) From 1994-98, Neil taught in the Drama program at Duke University.

Neil received a 2022 NEA Translation Grant to translate Anne Weber's Ahnen/Vaterland. In 2011, he was awarded a fellowship from the Howard Foundation (Brown University) and a PEN Translation Fund Grant to translate plays by Lukas Bärfuss. Neil has twice held residencies at the Banff International Literary Translation Centre and Writers Omi at Ledig House. His work has often been supported by the Goethe-Institut, as well as by the Consulate General of Switzerland and the Austrian Cultural Forum.

Translations Editor for Another Chicago Magazine. Active member of ALTA: the American Literary Translators Association. Founding member of TinT: the Theatre in Translation Network. Member of The Fence, and of the Third Coast Translators Collective. Teaching artist at Chicago Dramatists and instructor of seminars at the Newberry.

Neil’s short play “Dad’s Guns” appeared in 24 Gun Control Plays, ed. Caridad Svich and Zac Kline (NoPassport Press, 2013), and has been presented in staged readings in Australia and the US; a film version directed by Vince Singleton and edited and produced by Brittany Alsot was shown at the Patrick Lives On showcase in Chicago in March 2022 and is being submitted to festivals.

Neil is married to Natania Rosenfeld. They live in the Hudson Valley, NY.