Robert Weil, editor-in-chief and publishing director at Liveright, a division of W. W. Norton & Company, has been awarded the 2015 Friedrich Ulfers Prize, which honors honors a publisher, writer, critic, translator, or scholar who has "championed the advancement of German-language literature in the United States." The award will be presented at the opening ceremony of New York City's Festival Neue Literatur 2015 on February 19.
Weil has edited numerous literary translations of German writers, including multiple volumes by Joseph Roth, as well as works by Heinrich Böll, Bertolt Brecht, Franz Kafka, and Clemens J. Setz. He translated poetry by Brecht, in collaboration with Barbara Brecht-Schall, Brecht’s one surviving child; and fairytales from the Brothers Grimm, in several editions translated by the Harvard German scholar, Maria Tatar.
The prize, awarded for the first time in 2013, is given annually by Deutsches Haus at New York University, and is endowed with a $5,000 grant by scholar Professor Friedrich Ulfers.
