Philip Boehm

Philip Boehm (born 1958) is an American playwright, theater director and literary translator. Born in Texas, he was educated at Wesleyan University, Washington University in St. Louis, and the State Academy of Theater in Warsaw, Poland. Boehm is the founder of Upstream Theater in St. Louis, which has become known for its productions of foreign plays. Fluent in English, German and Polish, he has directed plays in Poland and Slovakia. His own written work includes several plays such as Mixtitlan, Soul of a Clone, Alma en venta, The Death of Atahualpa and Return of the Bedbug. Boehm has translated over thirty novels and plays by German and Polish writers, including Herta Müller, Franz Kafka and Hanna Krall. Nonfiction translations include A Woman in Berlin and Words to Outlive Us: Eyewitness Accounts from the Warsaw Ghetto. For these translations he has received fellowships from the NEA and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, as well as several awards including the Schlegel-Tieck Prize, the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize, the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize, and the Ungar German Translation Award.