Shelley Frisch

Shelley Laura Frisch (born January 1952) is an American literary translator from German to English. She is best known for her translations of biographies, most notably of Franz Kafka, Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, and Marlene Dietrich/Leni Riefenstahl (dual biography).
Biography.
Born in New York City, Frisch now lives in Princeton, New Jersey. She received a Ph.D. in Germanic languages and literature from Princeton University in 1981 after completing a doctoral dissertation titled "Speculations of the origin of language and German Romanticism." She taught at Bucknell University and Columbia University (where she was Executive Editor of "Germanic Review"), then served as Chair of the Bi-College German Department at Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges until turning to translation full-time in the mid-1990s. In addition to her translation work, she co-directs international translation workshops with Karen Nölle, and serves on several juries to award translation prizes, e.g., the Kurt and Helen Wolff Translation Prize.
Publications.
Frisch has written and lectured widely on themes pertaining to literature, cinema, and exile. Her book, "The Lure of the Linguistic", was published by Holmes & Meier in 2004.
Selected Book Translations