Life
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 has lived with his wife Mary in Princeton, N. J., since 1954.
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