Eva Hoffman (born Ewa Wydra on 1 July 1945) is an internationally acclaimed, award-winning writer and academic.

Early life and education

Eva Hoffman was born in

Kraków , officially the Royal Capital City of Kraków, is the List of cities and towns in Poland, second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city has a population of 804,237 ...

, Poland, shortly after World War II. Her parents, Boris and Maria Wydra, survived the Holocaust by hiding in a forest bunker and then by being hidden by Polish and Ukrainian neighbours. In 1959, at the age of 13, she emigrated with her parents and sister to

Vancouver Vancouver is a major city in Western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the cit ...

British Columbia British Columbia is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that ...

. Upon graduating from high school she received a scholarship and studied English literature at

Rice University William Marsh Rice University, commonly referred to as Rice University, is a Private university, private research university in Houston, Houston, Texas, United States. Established in 1912, the university spans 300 acres. Rice University comp ...

in Houston, Texas, the

Yale School of Music The Yale School of Music (often abbreviated to YSM) is one of the 12 professional schools at Yale University. It offers three graduate degrees: Master of Music (MM), Master of Musical Arts (MMA), and Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA), as well as a joi ...

, and

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard in English and American literature in 1975.

Career

Hoffman has been a professor of literature and creative writing at various institutions, such as

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

, the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota Twin Cities (historically known as University of Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint ...

Tufts Tufts University is a private research university in Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts, United States, with additional facilities in Boston and Grafton, as well as Talloires, France. Tufts also has several Doctor of Physical Therapy progr ...

, MIT, and

CUNY The City University of New York (CUNY, pronounced , ) is the Public university, public university system of Education in New York City, New York City. It is the largest urban university system in the United States, comprising 25 campuses: eleven ...

Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City, United States. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools ...

. From 1979 to 1990, she worked as an editor and writer at

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

, serving as deputy editor of Arts and Leisure, and senior editor of the Book Review, and reviewing regularly herself. In 1990, she received the Jean Stein Award from the

American Academy of Arts and Letters The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, Music of the United States, music, and Visual art of the United States, art. Its fixed number ...

and in 1992, the

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

for General Nonfiction, as well as the

Whiting Award The Whiting Award is an American award presented annually to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama Drama is the specific Mode (literature), mode of fiction Mimesis, represented in performance: a Play (theatre), play, ...

. In 2000, Eva Hoffman was the Year 2000 Una Lecturer at the Townsend Center for the Humanities at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

. In 2008, she was awarded an honorary

DLitt Doctor of Letters (D.Litt., Litt.D., Latin: ' or '), also termed Doctor of Literature in some countries, is a terminal degree in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. In the United States, at universities such as Drew University, the degree ...

by the

University of Warwick The University of Warwick ( ; abbreviated as ''Warw.'' in post-nominal letters) is a public research university on the outskirts of Coventry between the West Midlands and Warwickshire, England. The university was founded in 1965 as part of ...

. She has written and presented programmes for BBC Radio, and is the recipient of the

Prix Italia The Prix Italia is an international television, radio-broadcasting and web award. It was established in 1948 by RAI – Radiotelevisione Italiana (in 1948, RAI had the denomination RAI – Radio Audizioni Italiane) in Capri and is honoured with th ...

for a radio work combining text and music. She has lectured internationally on subjects of exile, historical memory, human rights and other contemporary issues. Her work has been translated internationally, and she was awarded an honorary DLitt from Warwick University in 2008. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and is currently a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies at University College, London. In her 1989 memoir, ''Lost in Translation,'' Hoffman tells the story of her experience immigrating to America from a post-World War II Poland. Hoffman presently lives in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

Family

She married Barry Hoffman, a fellow Harvard student, in 1971. The couple divorced in 1976.

Works

*''Lost in Translation: Life in a New Language'' (1989) *''Exit into History: A Journey Through the New Eastern Europe'' (1993) *''Shtetl: The Life and Death of a Small Town and the World of Polish Jews'' (1997) *''The Secret: A Fable for Our Time'' (2001) *''After Such Knowledge: Memory, History and the Legacy of the Holocaust'' (2004) *''Illuminations. A Novel'' (2008), US: ''Appassionata'' (2009) *''Time: Big Ideas, Small Books'' (2009) *''How to Be Bored'' (2016) *''On Czeslaw Milosz'' (2023) Fjellestad writes on ''Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language'': tis, to the best of my knowledge, the first "postmodern" autobiography written in English by an emigre from a European Communist country." She also writes that in the memoir, "Hoffman re-visions and reconstructs her Polish self through her American identity, and re-examines her American subjectivity through the memory of her Polish selfhood."

References

Sources

* Aleksandra Ziolkowska-Boehm, ''Amerykanie z wyboru'' mericans by Choice Warsaw 1998, pg. 298-310;

External links

Conversation with Eva Hoffman

Eva Hoffman, Una’s Lecturer 2000-2001Profile at The Whiting Foundation
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hoffman, Eva 1945 births Living people 21st-century American memoirists 21st-century American historians Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature Harvard University alumni Hunter College faculty Polish emigrants to the United States 20th-century Polish historians 20th-century Polish Jews Polish memoirists Rice University alumni Yale University alumni American women historians Polish women academics 21st-century American women writers American women memoirists