Professor of Modern German Literature, Fellow of New College, Oxford, Karen Leeder started her academic life researching the samizdat poetry, art and music scene that existed in East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall. She has continued her interest in the GDR and has published widely on modern German culture, especially of the post-1945 and contemporary periods; her interests range from poetry and the poetic tradition to modernity, GDR literature; contemporary German culture, lateness, women’s writing, angels, spectres, translation, Rilke and Brecht.