- Source: Terese Svoboda
Terese Svoboda is an American poet, novelist, memoirist, short story writer, librettist, translator, biographer, critic and videomaker.
Career
Svoboda is the author of nine books of poetry, eight novels, three collections of short fiction, a biography, a memoir and a book of translations from the Nuer.
She graduated from Columbia University School of the Arts. She was Distinguished Writer in Residence at University of Hawaii. and McGee Visiting professor of writing at Davidson College. Wichita State Distinguished Writer in Residence, University of Miami, Columbia University School of the Arts. Atlantic Center for the Arts Pabst Endowed Chair,
The opera Wet, for which she wrote the libretto, premiered at RedCat at L.A. Disney Hall in 2005. Her fourteen works in video have won numerous awards and are distributed worldwide. In writing about her work, reviewers have noted her frequent use of humor to address dire subjects, her interest in fabulism, and her lyrical use of language, especially as a poet writing prose.
An ardent unconventional feminist, she often writes about women in the Midwest in a way that has been termed "exotic, sophisticated, and heartbreaking." Her travels for the Smithsonian's Anthropology Film Archive to the South Pacific and the South Sudan provide additional settings. Postwar Japan is the location for her memoir about executions of U.S. servicemen by U.S. authorities.
Her work has appeared in AGNI, Granta, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, The New York Times, Narrative, Slate, Paris Review. The New York Post described her memoir, Black Glasses Like Clark Kent as "astounding"; The Washington Post regarded her biography Anything That Burns You as "magisterial."
South Sudan
After translating the songs of the Nuer people of the South Sudan on a PEN/Columbia Fellowship, she founded a scholarship for Nuer high school students in Nebraska. She was consulting producer for "The Quilted Conscience," a PBS documentary on South Sudanese girls learning to quilt with Nebraskan women.
Selected awards
1973 Hannah del Vecchio Award in Playwriting
1974 PEN/Columbia Translation Fellow
1978 National Endowment for the Humanities grant in translation
1983 Creative Artist Public Service fellow
1985 Emily Dickinson Award, Poetry Society of America
1987 Cecil Hemley Award, Poetry Society of America
1988 Jerome Foundation Fellow
1990 Iowa Poetry Prize
1990 Appleman Foundation grant for video
1990 New York State Council for the Arts grant for video
1992 Margaret Sanger: A Public Nuisance, co-director/writer of an ITVS-produced video selected by The Getty as one of the best two experimental biographies of the decade
1994 Bobst Prize and the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award
1998, 1993 New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship
1998 Walter E. Dakin Fellow in fiction, Sewanee Writing Conference
2003 Pushcart Prize for an essay
2005 Appleman Foundation for WET libretto
2007 Graywolf Nonfiction Prize
2008 Best of Japan 2008 in the Japan Times for Black Glasses Like Clark Kent
2013 Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction
2013 Money for Women Barbara Deming Memorial Fund
2015 James Merrill House Fellowship
2024 Juniper Prize
Video
The highlights of Svoboda's video work include exhibition in Exchange and Evolution as part of the Getty's Pacific Standard Time exhibition at RedCat, Ars Electronica, PBS, MoMA, WNYC, L.A.C.E., Lifestyle TV, Berlin Videofest, Art Institute of Chicago, CalArts, AFI, Long Beach Museum of Art, New American Makers, Athens Film Festival, Ohio Film Festival, American Film Festival, Atlanta Film Festival (Director's Choice), L.A. Freewaves, Pacific Film Archives, Columbus Film Festival, and Worldwide Video Festival. She also co-curated "Between Word and Image" for the Museum of Modern Art and Poets House, an exhibition that traveled to Banff and the Northwest Film Center. Her work is distributed by Vtape.
Bibliography
= Poetry
=All Aberration. ISBN 0-8203-0807-2 / ISBN 978-0-87745-272-0 / eBook ISBN 978-1-58729-235-4
Laughing Africa. Iowa Prize in Poetry, ISBN 978-0-87745-272-0 / ISBN 9780877452805 / eISBN 978-1-58729-2354
Mere Mortals. ISBN 0820334243 / ISBN 9780820334240
Treason ISBN 0970817762 / ISBN 9780970817761
Weapons Grade. ISBN 1557289069 / ISBN 9781557289063
Dogs Are Not Cats (chapbook). ISBN 9780988549036
When the Next Big War Blows Down the Valley: Selected and New Poems. ISBN 1934695459 / ISBN 9781934695456
Professor Harriman's Steam Air-Ship. ISBN 9781911335184
Theatrix: Poetry Plays. ISBN 1934695696
= Novels
=Cannibal. Bobst Prize and the Great Lakes Colleges Association First Fiction Prize, ISBN 0814780121
A Drink Called Paradise. ISBN 1582430012 / ISBN 9781582430010
Tin God. John Gardner Fiction book Award Finalist, ISBN 9780803245754
Pirate Talk or Mermalade. ISBN 978-0-982631-80-5
Bohemian Girl. Booklist Ten Best Westerns 2012, ISBN 9780803226821
Dog on Fire. ISBN 9781496235169
Roxy and Coco. ISBN 9781959000068
= Short fiction
=Trailer Girl and Other Stories. ISBN 1582430853 / ISBN 9781582430850
Great American Desert. ISBN 978-0814255209
The Long Swim. Juniper Prize for Fiction ISBN 978-1-62534-807-4
= Non-fiction
=Biography
Anything That Burns You: A Portrait of Lola Ridge, Radical Poet. ISBN 9781943156573
Memoirs
Black Glasses Like Clark Kent. Graywolf Nonfiction Prize. ISBN 9781555974909
Translations
Cleaned the Crocodile's Teeth. (Nuer) ISBN 978-0912678634
References
"Removing the sepia-tint: an Interview with Terese Svoboda," Prick of the Spindle.
"Like Prions: An Interview with Terese Svoboda by Shya Scanlon"
"Terese Svoboda"
External links
Author's Website
Terese Svoboda on Fictionaut
Caned
"Terese Svoboda – John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation…". Retrieved 2024-11-05.