Edmund Leroy "Mike" Keeley (born February 5, 1928) is a prize-winning novelist, translator, and essayist, a poet, and Charles Barnwell Straut Professor Emeritus of English at Princeton University. He is a noted expert on Greek poets C. P. Cavafy, George Seferis, Odysseus Elytis and Yannis Ritsos, and on post-Second World War Greek history.
Edmund is the son of the American diplomat James Hugh Keeley, Jr., and brother of diplomat Robert V. Keeley. He spent his childhood in Canada, Greece, and Washington, D. C. before earning his B.A. from Princeton University in 1949. In 1952 he received a doctorate in Comparative Literature from Oxford University where he studied with a fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.
Edmund served twice as president of the Modern Greek Studies Association from 1970 to 1973 and 1980 to 1982, and as president of PEN American Center from 1992 to 1994. He retired from a long career of teaching English, Creative Writing, and Hellenic Studies at Princeton University in 1994.
His fiction and non-fiction are often set in Greece, where he spends part of each year, but also in Europe and the Balkans, where he has frequently traveled, and in Thailand and Washington, D. C.. He lived with his wife Mary in Princeton, N. J., from 1954 until Mary's death in 2012.
1959 Rome Prize American Academy of Arts and LettersNew Jersey Authors Award:1960 For the novel The Libation (Citation)1968 For George Seferis: Collected Poems, 1924-19551970 For the novel The Impostor1962 Guinness Poetry Award selection1973 National Book Award in Translation (finalist)1975 P.E.N.-Columbia University Translation Center Prize1980 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award, Academy of American Poets1982 Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities1983 PEN/National Endowment for the Arts Fiction Syndicate Award1984-85 Pushcart Prize Selection1987 First European Prize for Translation of Poetry1992 National Translation Award (Citation)1994 Honorary Doctorate, University of Athens1999 Academy Award in Literature2000 PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation2000 Criticos Prize, London Hellenic Society2001 Commander of the Order of the Phoenix2003 The Yale Review Prize2003 Trustees' Annual Award, Gennadius Library2004 Phidippides Award2006 Honorary Doctorate, Richard Stockton College2008 Dido Sotiriou Cultural Prize, Hellenic Authors' Society2008 Lord Byron Award, Hellenic College2010 Honorary Doctorate, University of Cyprus2014 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, for co-translator of Diaries of Exile by Yannis RitsosThe Libation. Charles Scribner's & Sons. 1958. The Gold-hatted Lover. Little, Brown and Company. 1961. The Imposter. Doubleday. 1970. Voyage to a Dark Island. Curtis Books. 1972. Problems in rendering Modern Greek. 1975. Cavafy's Alexandria: Study of a Myth in Progress. Harvard University Press. 1976. Ritsos in Parentheses. Princeton University Press. 1979. A Wilderness Called Peace. Simon & Schuster. 1985. ISBN 0-671-47416-2. The Salonika Bay Murder, Cold War Politics and the Polk Affair. Princeton University Press. 1989. School for Pagan Lovers. Rutgers University Press. 1993. ISBN 0-8135-1935-7. Albanian Journal, the Road to Elbasan. White Pine Press. 1997. ISBN 1-877727-76-8. On Translation: Reflections and Conversations. Harwood Academic Publishers. 1998. Inventing Paradise. The Greek Journey, 1937-47. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1999. Some Wine for Remembrance. White Pine Press. 2002. ISBN 1-893996-15-8. Borderlines, A Memoir. White Pine Press. 2005. ISBN 1-893996-33-6. The Megabuilders of Queenston Park. Wild River Books. 2014. ISBN 978-0-9839188-4-4Requiem for Mary. Greenhouse Review Press. 2015. ISBN 978-0-9838094-2-5Editor and translator
Six Poets of Modern Greece (With Philip Sherrard) Alfred A. Knopf, 1961Vassilis Vassilikos, 'The Plant,' 'The Well,' 'The Angel': A Trilogy (With Mary Keeley) Knopf, 1964.Four Greek Poets (With Philip Sherrard) Penguin Books, 1965George Seferis, Collected Poems: 1924-1955 (With Philip Sherrard) Princeton University Press, 1967 - ISBN 0-691-01300-4C. P. Cavafy, Passions and Ancient Days (with George Savidis) Hogarth Press, 1972 ISBN 0-7012-0351-XModern Greek Writers: Solomos, Calvos, Matesis, Palamas, Cavafy, Kazantzakis, Seferis, Elytis (With Peter Bien) Princeton University Press, 1972C. P. Cavafy, Selected Poems (With Philip Sherrard) Princeton University Press, 1972Odysseus Elytis, The Axion Esti (with George Savidis) Pittsburgh University Press, 1972C. P. Cavafy, Three Poems of Passion (with George Savidis) Plain Wrapper Press, 1975C. P. Cavafy, Collected Poems (With Philip Sherrard and George Savidis) Princeton University Press, 1975, revised edition, Princeton University Press, 1992. - ISBN 0-691-01537-6Angelos Sikelianos, Selected Poems (With Philip Sherrard) Princeton University Press, 1979Odysseus Elytis, Selected Poems Viking-Penguin, 1981 - ISBN 0-670-29246-XThe Dark Crystal: An Anthology of Modern Greek Poetry (With Philip Sherrard) Denise Harvey & CO, 1981Voices of Modern Greece: Selected Poems of C.P. Cavafy, Angelos Sikelianos, George Seferis, Odysseus Elytis, Nikos Gatsos (With Philip Sherrard) Princeton University Press, 1981 - ISBN 0-691-01382-9Yannis Ritsos, Return and Other Poems Parallel Editions, 1983C. P. Cavafy, A Selection of Poems (With Philip Sherrard) Camberwell Press, 1985Yannis Ritsos, Exile and Return: Selected Poems, 1967-74 Ecco Press, 1985The Legacy of R.P. Blackmur: Essays, Memoirs, Texts (with Edward T. Cone and Joseph Frank) Ecco Press, 1987 - ISBN 0-88001-152-1Yannis Ritsos: Repetitions, Testimonies, Parentheses Princeton University Press, 1991 - ISBN 0-691-01908-8The Essential Cavafy (With Philip Sherrard) Ecco Press, 1995 - ISBN 0-691-01491-4George Seferis, Collected Poems, (With Philip Sherrard) Princeton University Press, 1995George Seferis and Edmund Keeley: Correspondence, 1951-1971 Princeton University Library, 1997 - ISBN 0-87811-042-9A Century of Greek Poetry 1900-2000: Bilingual Edition (with Peter Bien, Peter Constantine, and Karen Van Dyck) Cosmos Publishing, 2004 - ISBN 1-932455-00-0Selected Poems Of Odysseus Elytis (with Philip Sherrard) Anvil Press, 2007 - ISBN 0-85646-355-8The Greek Poets: Homer to the Present (co-editor) W. W. Norton, 2009″Angelos Sikelianos: Selected Poems″,(with Philip Sherrard), second bilingual edition, Denise Harvey(Publisher), 1996, ISBN 960-7120-12-4
