Melody Makeda Ledwon (she/her) is a multidirectional literary translator (AAL/English/German), interpreter and educator.

Born and raised in Berlin she spent most of her adult life in New York City. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Africana Studies and Sociology from Hunter College, City University of New York and a master’s degree in Education from Washington University in St. Louis.

Her work focuses on multilingual, feminist Afrodiasporic stories.

Melody’s (co-) translations include, Vierhundert Seelen: Die Geschichte des Afrikanischen Amerika 1619–2019 (Penguin Random House, 2024), Angela Y. Davis: Eine Autobiographie (Aki, 2023), and HALLO, UND TSCHÜSS, KOKO, COME IN (Theater der Welt, 2023). Excerpts of her translation of Messer, Zungen by Simoné Goldschmidt-Lechner have been published in World Literature Today and are forthcoming in The Common.

She has interpreted for clients such as Akademie der Künste, Diversity Arts Culture, Federal Agency for Civic Education und die Initiative Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland (ISD).

In the fall of 2020, she founded the Black Translators’ Network – a platform for Black translators working in Germany and beyond. 

She works as a Fiction Editor at SAND Journal