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

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. 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. Neil received a 2022 NEA Translation Grant to translate Anne Weber’s Ahnen (German)/Vaterland (French); the translation will be published as Sanderling by Indigo Press in November 2025. 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 is also the author of Performing Opposition: Modern Theater and the Scandalized Audience (Praeger, 2003). At Knox, in addition to teaching courses on dramatic literature and theatre history, dramaturgy, and playwriting, Neil directed over fifteen productions, ranging from Molière, Schiller, and Chekhov to the college world premiere of Jamil Khoury’s Mosque Alert. Neil also directed several of his translations at Knox, including Ewald Palmetshofer’s Before Sunrise and Rebekka Kricheldorf’s Rosa and Blanca.

Since 2020, Neil has served as Translations Editor for Another Chicago Magazine. He is an active member of ALTA: the American Literary Translators Association, and a founding member of TinT: the Theatre in Translation Network. Also a member of The Fence, and of the Third Coast Translators Collective. In Chicago, Neil was a teaching artist at Chicago Dramatists and an instructor of seminars at the Newberry Library.

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.