Teresa D. Lewis is an American writer, essayist and literary translator from French and German. Her translation of Austrian poet and novelist Maja Haderlap's novel ''Angel of Oblivion'' was awarded the 2017 PEN Translation Prize, the Austrian Cultural Forum NY Translation Prize, and was nominated for the BTBA. She has also translated works by

Peter Handke Peter Handke (; born 6 December 1942) is an Austrians, Austrian novelist, playwright, translator, poet, film director, and screenwriter. He was awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature "for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has ...

Walter Benjamin Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin ( ; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German-Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of German idealism, Jewish mysticism, Western M ...

Ernst Jünger Ernst Jünger (; 29 March 1895 – 17 February 1998) was a German author, highly decorated soldier, philosopher, and entomology, entomologist who became publicly known for his World War I memoir ''Storm of Steel''. The son of a successful busin ...

, and

Philippe Jaccottet Philippe Jaccottet (; 30 June 1925 – 24 February 2021) was a Swiss Francophone poet and translator. Life and work After completing his studies in Lausanne, he lived for several years in Paris. In 1953, he moved to the town of Grignan in ...

. She is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, and the

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the feder ...

. She is a graduate of the

University of Notre Dame The University of Notre Dame du Lac (known simply as Notre Dame; ; ND) is a Private university, private Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, United States. Founded in 1842 by members of the Congregation of Holy Cross, a Cathol ...

and received the

Rhodes Scholarship The Rhodes Scholarship is an international postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford in Oxford, United Kingdom. The scholarship is open to people from all backgrounds around the world. Established in 1902, it is ...

to the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

, New College, in 1986.

Career

Lewis is an essayist and translator. Her essays, primarily about European literature, have been published in ''

The New Criterion ''The New Criterion'' is a New York–based monthly literary magazine and journal of artistic and cultural criticism, edited by Roger Kimball (editor and publisher) and James Panero (executive editor). It has sections for criticism of poetry ...

'', ''

The Hudson Review ''The Hudson Review'' is a quarterly journal of literature and the arts. History It was founded in 1947 in New York, by William Arrowsmith, Joseph Deericks Bennett, and George Frederick Morgan. The first issue was introduced in the spring of ...

'', ''

World Literature Today ''World Literature Today'' (''WLT'') is an American magazine of international literature and culture, published at the University of Oklahoma. The magazine's stated goal is to publish international essays, poetry, fiction, interviews, and book ...

'', ''

The American Scholar "The American Scholar" was a speech given by Ralph Waldo Emerson on August 31, 1837, to Phi Beta Kappa society of Harvard College at the First Parish in Cambridge in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was invited to speak in recognition of his groundb ...

'', and ''

Bookforum ''Bookforum'' is an American book review magazine devoted to books and the discussion of literature. After announcing that it would cease publication in December 2022, it reported its relaunch under the direction of ''The Nation'' magazine six mo ...

.'' She is an advisory editor for ''The Hudson Review'', and is also a board member for the National Books Critics Circle. From 2014 to 2015, Lewis was the curator for the Festival Neue Literature, an American literary festival based in New York, which focuses on German-language literature from Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, in English, and consists of literary events, book readings, and panels. Lewis translates primarily from French and German into English, and has translated works by

Hans Magnus Enzensberger Hans Magnus Enzensberger (11 November 1929 – 24 November 2022) was a German author, poet, translator, and editor. He also wrote under the pseudonyms Andreas Thalmayr, Elisabeth Ambras, Linda Quilt and Giorgio Pellizzi. Enzensberger was regarde ...

, Alois Hotschnig, Melinda Nadj Abonji, Julya Rabinowich,

Lukas Bärfuss Lukas Bärfuss (born 30 December 1971) is a Swiss writer and playwright who writes in German. He won the Georg Büchner Prize in 2019. Biography Born in Thun, Switzerland in 1971, Lukas Bärfuss began training as a bookseller after graduating f ...

, Jean-Luc Benoziglio,

Pascal Bruckner Pascal Bruckner (; born 15 December 1948 in Paris) is a French writer, one of the " New Philosophers" who came to prominence in the 1970s and 1980s. Much of his work has been devoted to critiques of French society and culture. Biography Bruckne ...

, Maja Haderlap,

, Christine Angot,

, and

Anselm Kiefer Anselm Kiefer (born 8 March 1945) is a German painter and sculptor. He studied with Peter Dreher and Horst Antes at the end of the 1960s. His works incorporate materials such as straw, ash, clay, lead, and shellac. The poems of Paul Celan h ...

. In 2017, she published an English translation of Christine Angot's novel, ''Incest''. Her translation was nominated for the

Best Translated Book Award The Best Translated Book Award was an American literary award that recognized the previous year's best original translation into English, one book of poetry and one of fiction. It was inaugurated in 2008 and was conferred by Three Percent, the onl ...

. In a review in the ''New Yorker'', critic H. C. Wilentz praised Lewis's translation, noting the challenges raised by Angot's "antagonism towards conventional syntax," which made Lewis's translation "a feat of perspicuity". In ''Asymptote Journal'', Tsipi Keller praised Lewis's translation as well, stating that "it feels as though Angot, so very French, is speaking to us directly in English." In 2015 she received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship to support her translation of Swiss writer Ludwig Hohl’s ''Notizen'', a book consisting of Hohl's notes, journal entries, and reflections. In 2022, she has received a fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts to translate ''In the Forest of the Metropoles'' by Karl-Markus Gauß.

Translated works

* (2008)

, '' Once Again for Thucydides'' (German to English, New Directions) * (2012)

, ''One hundred days'' (German to English, London : Granta) * (2011) Alois Hotschnig, ''Ludwig’s Room'' (German to English, Seagull Books) * (2013) Philippe Jaccottet,
Seedtime: Notebooks 1954-79
' (French to English, Seagull Books) * (2014)

Doron Rabinovici Doron Rabinovici () is an Israeli-Austrian writer, historian and essayist. He was born in Tel Aviv in 1961 and moved to Vienna in 1964. His literary work includes short stories, novels and essays, but also drama. Life Doron Rabinovici was born ...

, ''Elsewhere'' (German to English, London : Haus Publishing Ltd) * (2014) Melinda Nadj Abonji, Fly Away, Pigeon (German to English, Seagull Books) * (2015)

, ''Obscurity'' (London; New York; Calcutta : Seagull Books) * (2015)

, ''Notebooks : Volume 1: 1998-1999'' (German to English, Seagull Books) * (2016) Maja Haderlap: ''Angel of Oblivion'' (German to English, Brooklyn, NY : Archipelago Books) * (2017) Christine Angot, ''

Incest Incest ( ) is sexual intercourse, sex between kinship, close relatives, for example a brother, sister, or parent. This typically includes sexual activity between people in consanguinity (blood relations), and sometimes those related by lineag ...

'' (French to English, Brooklyn, NY : Archipelago Books) * (2017)

Lutz Seiler Lutz Seiler (born 8 June 1963 in Gera, Thuringia) is a German poet and novelist. Considered one of the most important German poets living today, he is the author of numerous books of poetry, prose, and essays, and gained national attention for h ...

, ''Kruso'' (German to English, Scribe Publications) * (2017) Klaus Merz,
Stigmata of Bliss
' Three Novellas (German to English, Seagull Books) * (2018)

: ''Panopticon'' (Seagull Books) * (2018) Monique Schwitter; ''One another : a novel'' (German to English, New York, NY : Persea Books) * (2019)

, ''The Storyteller Essays'' (German to English, New York, NY : New York Review of Books) * (2019) Michel Layaz,
My Mother's Tears
' (French to English, Seagull Books) * (2020)

Jonas Lüscher Jonas Lüscher (born 22 October 1976 in Schlieren, Switzerland) is a Swiss writer, including of essays and novels, living in Germany. Early life Lüscher grew up in Bern, where he later trained between 1994 and 1998 at the Muristalden Evangeli ...

, ''Kraft'' (German to English, New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux) * (2021) Mariana Leky,
What you can see from here
' (German to English, New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux) * (2021) Ludwig Hohl,
The Notes: On Non-premature Reconciliation
', Foreword by Joshua Cohen (German to English, New Haven: Yale University Press) * (2022) Maja Haderlap,
distant transit
' (German to English, Brooklyn, NY: Archipelago Books) * (2022) Anne Weber,
Epic Annette: A Heroine's Tale
' (French and German to English, London: The Indigo Press) * (2023)

, '' On the Marble Cliffs'' (German to English, New York, NY: New York Review of Books) * (2023) Judith Keller,
The Questionable Ones
' (German to English (Seagull Books)

Awards and honors

* 2009 – PEN Translation Fund Grand for translation of Alois Hotschnig's short stories * 2014 – Finalist for French-American Foundation Translation Prize, for a translation of Jean-Luc Benoziglio, ''Privy Portrait'' * 2014 – Max Geilinger Translation Award for translating Philippe Jaccottet's ''Obscurity'' * 2015 – Austrian Cultural Forum's Translation Prize for ''Angel of Oblivion'' by Maja Haderlap * 2015 – John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship * 2015 – PEN UK Translates! Award (for ''Kruso'') * 2015 – Fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation for a translation of Ludwig Hohl’s ''Notizen'' * 2016 – ACFNY Translation Prize * 2017 – Jan Michalski Foundation Residency for Ludwig Hohl’s ''Notes'' * 2017 – PEN Translation Prize for a translation of Maja Haderlap's ''Angel of Oblivion'' * 2018 – Nominated for the

, for translating Christine Angot's ''Incest'' * 2019 – Schlegel-Tieck Translation Prize Runner-up for Lutz Seiler’s novel ''Kruso'' * 2020 – Finalist, French-American Foundation Translation Prize for a translation of Michel Layaz's ''My Mother's Tears'' * 2021 – PEN UK Translates! award for Anne Weber’s novel in verse ''Epic Annette'' * 2022 – Fellowship from the

(USA) for a translation of ''In the Forest of the Metropoles'' by Karl-Markus Gauß * 2022 – Berlin Prize Fellow, American Academy in Berlin * 2022 – National Endowment of the Arts Translation Fellowship for Karl-Markus Gauß’s essays * 2022 – PEN UK Translates! award for Lutz Seiler’s novel '' Star 111''

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lewis, Tess 21st-century American translators 21st-century American women writers 21st-century American essayists National Endowment for the Arts Fellows Year of birth missing (living people) Living people