Ilija Trojanow
Bio
Ilija Trojanow is a German novelist and travel writer, the author of many books of fiction and non-fiction, including The Collector of Worlds, Along the Ganges, and Mumbai to Mecca. His autobiographical debut novel was adapted into the award-winning film The World Is Big and Salvation Lurks Just Around the Corner. A vocal critic of domestic surveillance and the NSA, Trojanow was at the center of a cause célèbre in 2013 when the United States refused him entry.Philip Boehm has translated more than thirty novels and plays by German and Polish writers, including Herta Müller, Franz Kafka and Hanna Krall. Nonfiction translations include A Woman in Berlin by Anonymous and Words to Outlive Us, a collection of eyewitness accounts from the Warsaw Ghetto. For these translations he has received numerous awards including fellowships from the NEA and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He also works as a theater director and playwright: works for the stage include Alma en venta, Mixtitlan, and Return of the Bedbug. He is the founding Artistic Director of Upstream Theater in St. Louis, which in 2010 was awarded a National Theatre Company grant by the American Theatre Wing (Founder of the Tonys).