Philip Boehm has translated more than 30 books and plays by Polish and German writers such as Hanna Krall, Herta Müller, and Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz. He also works as a theater director and playwright: writings for the stage include Mixtitlan, The Good Ship St. Louis, and Return of the Bedbug.
As the founding artistic director of Upstream Theater in St. Louis, he has produced dozens of U.S. premiers of plays from around the world, many in translation.
During his MacDowell residency, Boehm worked on two translations of novels: one from German, and the other from Polish. Down and Out in Berlin (working title) by the recently rediscovered German author Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz (1915-1942) will appear in 2025 with Pushkin Press; this follows Boehm's 2021 translation of Boschwitz' The Passenger, which made the Sunday Times's list of Top 10 hardback fiction bestsellers. To support his translation of the Polish novel (working title: I'll Be Back Before Dark) by the late Jerzy Szperkowicz (1933-2022), Boehm received a 2024 Translation Fellowship from the NEA (his third such award).
