Genese Grill

Genese Grill is a translator and scholar of Germanic literature. She earned a BFA in painting from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, as well as a BFA, MA, and PhD in Germanic literature and languages from the City University of New York.

Grill is the author of several books, including Portals: Reflections on the Spirit in Matter (Splice, 2022) and The World as Metaphor in Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities: Possibility as Reality (Camden House, 2012). She is also the translator of four books by Robert Musil: Literature and Politics: Selected Writings (Contra Mundum Press, 2023); Theater Symptoms: Plays and Writings on Drama (Contra Mundum Press, 2020); Unions: Two Stories (Contra Mundum Press, 2019); and Thought Flights (Contra Mundum Press, 2015). Grill also worked with Samantha Rose Hill on the editing and translation of What Remains: The Collected Poems of Hannah Arendt (Liveright Publishing, 2024). She is currently writing the first English-language biography of Musil for Yale University Press.

Grill was artist in residence at the Willowell Foundation in Vermont from 2014 to 2016. She served as a board member for the International Robert Musil Society from 2010 to 2016. She lives in Plainfield, Vermont.