David Burnett was born in 1973 in the Greater Cleveland area. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a BA in History and German from Kent State University (Ohio) including a year abroad at the University of Leicester (UK). Since 1995 he has lived in Leipzig, Germany, with an interlude in Cracow, Poland.
He holds an MA in Cultural Studies and Translation from Leipzig University, and works as a freelance translator with a focus on history, the arts, and literature. His first book-length translation was the East German novel New Glory by Günter de Bruyn, published by Northwestern University Press in 2009. His translation of Daniel Siemen’s The Making of a Nazi Hero: The Murder and Myth of Horst Wessel (I.B. Tauris, 2013) was chosen as a BBC History Magazine Book of the Year in 2013. He received a 2014 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant for his translation of The American Stories by Johannes Urzidil.
