Robyn Creswell is an American critic, scholar and translator. He graduated from

Brown University Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...

in 1999 and gained a doctorate in

comparative literature Comparative literature studies is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across language, linguistic, national, geographic, and discipline, disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role ...

from

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

in 2011. In addition to teaching comparative literature at Brown University, he also serves as poetry editor of the '' Paris Review''. Creswell's specialization is contemporary

Arabic literature Arabic literature ( / ALA-LC: ''al-Adab al-‘Arabī'') is the writing, both as prose and poetry, produced by writers in the Arabic language. The Arabic word used for literature is ''Adab (Islam), Adab'', which comes from a meaning of etiquett ...

. He has translated several literary works from the

Middle East The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...

, including ''That Smell and Notes from Prison'' by

Sonallah Ibrahim Son'allah Ibrahim ( ''Ṣunʻ Allāh Ibrāhīm'') (born 1937) is an Egyptian novelist and short story writer and one of the " Sixties Generation" who is known for his leftist views which are expressed rather directly in his work. His novels, es ...

and ''The Clash of Images'' by Abdelfattah Kilito, and has written numerous essays for various literary periodicals. A revised version of his thesis ''Tradition and Translation: Poetic Modernism in Beirut'' (2012) was published by Princeton University Press as ''City of Beginnings: Poetic Modernism in Beirut'' (2019). Creswell won the 2013 Roger Shattuck Prize for Criticism, awarded by the

Center for Fiction The Center for Fiction, originally called the New York Mercantile Library, is a not-for-profit organization in New York City, with offices at 15 Lafayette Avenue in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Prior to their move in early 2018, The Center for Fiction ...

.Profile
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Bibliography

Books

* *Contributor to ''A New Divan: A Lyrical Dialogue Between East and West (''Gingko Library, 2019). ;Translations *Abdelfattah Kilito. ''The clash of images'', London: Darf Publishers, 2010. *Sonollah Ibrahim. ''That smell and notes from prison.'' New Directions, 2013. *Abdelfattah Kilito. ''The tongue of Adam''. New Directions, 2015. * Iman Mersal. ''The Threshold''. Farrar Straus Giroux, 2022.

Book reviews

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Creswell, Robyn Living people Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American translators Brown University alumni The New York Review of Books people New York University alumni