Cynthia L. Haven is an American

literary scholar Literary criticism (or literary studies) is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of literature's goals and methods. T ...

, author, critic,

Slavicist Slavic (American English) or Slavonic (British English) studies, also known as Slavistics is the academic field of area studies concerned with Slavic areas, languages, literature, history, and culture. Originally, a Slavist or Slavicist was prim ...

, and

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...

. Her books includ
''Evolution of Desire: A Life of René Girard''
which the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' named one of the top books of 2018, and
Czesław Miłosz: A California Life
'. She is a

National Endowment for the Humanities The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...

Public Scholar. She has been a Milena Jesenská Journalism Fellow with the

Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen The Institute for Human Sciences (german: Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, IWM) is an independent institute for advanced study in the humanities and social sciences based in Vienna, Austria. History and core idea The IWM was found ...

in Vienna and a visiting scholar at Stanford University's Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages while researching her book on French theorist

René Girard René Noël Théophile Girard (; ; 25 December 1923 – 4 November 2015) was a French polymath, historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social science whose work belongs to the tradition of philosophical anthropology. Girard was the a ...

. She was a Voegelin fellow at the Hoover Institution while working on her book on Nobel poet

Joseph Brodsky Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky (; russian: link=no, Иосиф Александрович Бродский ; 24 May 1940 – 28 January 1996) was a Russian and American poet and essayist. Born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), USSR in 1940, ...

and his translator, George L. Kline. She blogs a
The Book Haven
She has written for a wide range of publications, including

The Times Literary Supplement ''The Times Literary Supplement'' (''TLS'') is a weekly literary review published in London by News UK, a subsidiary of News Corp. History The ''TLS'' first appeared in 1902 as a supplement to ''The Times'' but became a separate publication ...

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...

, the

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the ...

, and ''

The New York Times Book Review ''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely read ...

''. She studied with

and has won many literary and journalistic awards, including two

Hopwood Award The Hopwood Awards are a major scholarship program at the University of Michigan, founded by Avery Hopwood. Under the terms of the will of Avery Hopwood, a prominent American dramatist and member of the class of 1905 of the University of Michiga ...

s and a Broomfield Essay Prize while at the University of Michigan. Her Penguin Modern Classics anthology for the selected writings of René Girard will be published in April 2023, and a short German anthology was published in 2022 with the Leipzig publisher Reclam, for its popular "Was bedeutet das alles?" series.

Books

#
All Desire is a Desire for Being: Essential Writings
' (London: Penguin Modern Classics, 2023). #
Warum kämpfen wir? Und wie hören wir auf?
' (Leipzig: Reclam, 2022). #
Czesław Miłosz: A California Life
' (Berkeley: Heyday, 2021). #
The Man Who Brought Brodsky Into English: Conversations with George L. Kline
' (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2021). #
Conversations with René Girard: Prophet of Envy
' (London: Bloomsbury, 2020). #
Evolution of Desire: A Life of René Girard
'' (Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2018). #
Everything Came to Me at Once: The Intellectual Vision of René Girard
'(Belmont, NC: Wiseblood, 2017).'' #
An Invisible Rope: Portraits of Czesław Miłosz
' (Athens, Ohio: Swallow/Ohio University Press, 2011). #
Czesław Miłosz: Conversations
'' (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, Literary Conversations Series, 2006). #
Three Poets in Conversation
' (London: Waywiser, 2006). #
Peter Dale in Conversation with Cynthia Haven
' London: Waywiser, 2005). #
Joseph Brodsky: Conversations
' (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, Literary Conversations Series, 2003).

References

Interviews

"Cynthia Haven: From Envy to Forgiveness"
Meditations with Zohar, Apple Podcasts, February 14, 2023.
"Cynthia L. Haven on René Girard, Czeslaw Milosz, and Joseph Brodsky,"
Conversations with Tyler Cowen, Aug. 24, 2022
"Czesław Miłosz: A California Life,"
Robert Pogue Harrison's "Entitled Opinions," July 25, 2022.
"Czesław Miłosz: A California Life — A Conversation with Cynthia L. Haven,"
The Athenaeum Review, Episode 45, 2019.
"Cynthia Haven: Interview with Scott Beauchamp
"Full Stop: Reviews, Interviews, Marginalia," May 15, 2019.
"René Girard and the Mysterious Nature of Desire"
Johns Hopkins University The Hub, August 8, 2018. {{DEFAULTSORT:Haven, Cynthia Living people 1963 births 20th-century American women writers American literary critics American women journalists American women critics 20th-century American biographers American women biographers 21st-century American women