ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Eskin, Ph.D., is an award-winning author, critic, translator, philosopher, and publisher. He was educated in Israel, Germany, France, Minnesota, and New Jersey, and is the cofounder and Vice President of Upper West Side Philosophers, Inc. A former Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, he has taught at Middlesex County College, Rutgers University, the University of Cambridge, and Columbia University.

His many publications on cultural, literary and philosophical subjects include: Nabokovs Version von Puskins “Evgenij Onegin”: Zwischen Version und Fiktion – eine übersetzungs- und fiktionstheoretische Untersuchung (1994); Ethics and Dialogue in the Works of Levinas, Bakhtin, Mandel’shtam, and Celan (2000); On Literature and Ethics: A Special Edition of Poetics Today (2004); Poetic Affairs: Celan, Grünbein, Brodsky (2008); 17 Vorurteile, die wir Deutschen gegen Amerika und die Amerikaner haben und die so nicht ganz stimmen können (under the pseudonym ‘Misha Waiman’; 2008); The DNA of Prejudice: On the One and the Many (2010; Winner of the Next Generation Book Award for Social Change); The Bars of Atlantis: Selected Essays by Durs Grünbein (as editor; 2010); Yoga for the Mind: A New Ethic for Thinking and Being & Meridians of Thought (2013; with Kathrin Stengel, Winner of the Living Now Book Award); and The Wisdom of Parenthood: An Essay (2013). Philosophical Truffles (2018); Descartes der Metapher: Neun Tauchgänge ins Dichterdasein Durs Grünbeins (2022)“Schwerer werden. Leichter sein” – Gespräche um Paul Celan. Mit Durs Grünbein, Gerhard Falkner, Aris Fioretos und Ulrike Draesner (2020); Descartes der Metapher: Neun Tauchgänge ins Dichterdasein Durs Grünbeins (2022); On Writing Philosophy: A Manifesto (2022); Gespräch über Deutschland (2024; with Ulrike Draesner); Childhood: An Essay on the Human Condition (2024); The Emprise of Poetry: Durs Grünbein, America, Antisemitism, and the Pursuit of Liberty (2024).

Michael Eskin translates from German, Russian, and French. His translations have appeared in The New Yorker, Sport 40, and World Literature Today, among other venues, and include: Durs Grünbein's The Vocation of Poetry and Mortal Diamond: Poems (2013); Wilhelm Schmid's What We Gain As We Grow Older: On Gelassenheit (2016); L. P Yakubinsky's On Dialogic Speech (2016); Andrea Köhler's Passing Time: An Essay on Waiting (2017); and Alexandre Jollien's In Praise of Weakness (2017).

He has been a frequent guest on radio programs and lectured regularly on cultural, philosophical, and literary subjects across the US and Europe – as a guest of PEN, the United States Consulate General, Germany, The Federation of German-American Clubs, and Limmud, an international organization fostering cross-cultural Jewish education, among others. He lives in New York City.