Terese Svoboda

Hailed as one of "our best writers" by Karen Russell, her fiction has been likened to Lauren Groff, Helen DeWitt, George Saunders, and Amy Hempel. Her career was discussed at the 'LILAC: Laboratoire interuniversitaire de littérature américaine contemporaine' at the Sorbonne University. Her second memoir, Hitler and My Mother-in-Law, received a Publishers Weekly star. Roxy and Coco, her most recent novel and first speculative, and The Long Swim, her third story collection, were praised in a full page of the New York Times Book Review. Electric Lit said of 'Dog on Fire' that it was "a richly imagined novel from a writer at the top of her form." Praised by Karen Russell in Esquire, Great American Desert was also lauded by the Los Angeles Review of Books. Emily St. John Mandel wrote on The Millions that Pirate Talk and Mermalade was "a strange and nastily beautiful book" and that Tin God is the work of "a true original." Bohemian Girl was one of 10 Best Westerns of 2012, according to Booklist. Cannibal, her first novel, was deemed "a woman's Heart of Darkness in Vogue. Cleaned the Crocodile's Teeth, Translation of Nuer Song was chosen for the New York Times Writer's Choice column, and praised by Anthropos with "She approaches the Nuer not as an alien, exotic society but as people whose artistic expression may hold meaning and pleasure for any reader." Brooklyn Rail said of her Selected Poems, When the Next Big War Blows Down the Valley: "Terese Svoboda is one of few contemporary American writers who possesses a global consciousness." Her book of poetry, Theatrix: Poetry Plays was cited by Compulsive Reader as "witty, irreverent, provocative," and Virginia Konchan wrote that "Theatrix: Poetry Plays is a tour de force collection that explodes our notion of the fourth wall." Entropy included it in 'Best of 2020-2021 Poetry Books'. Compulsive Reader also quotes The Bloomsbury Reviews comment that Svoboda is "one of those writers you would be tempted to read regardless of the setting or the period or the plot or even the genre." In addition to the libretto for WET, many of her poems have been set to music, including 'Orlando' as "gun gun gun" by Errolyn Wallen performed at the Crypt on the Green in London and recorded on the Hermes Experiment Album Here We Are. Three of her books have been reissued. Cary Nelson, editor of the Anthology of American Poetry, said of her biography Anything That Burns You: A Portrait of Lola Ridge, Radical Poet: "No one who cares about American culture will want to miss this book." Svoboda also provided the afterword for Willa Cather's My Antonia (Signet Classics, 2014); and the introduction to Genevieve Taggard To Test the Joy: Selected Poems and Prose (Boiler House Press, 2023). She is a board member of Women Writing Women's Lives.

• 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 • 2025 Literary Awards Program Winner, Santa Fe Writers Project.