Lisa Katz

March 13, 2015 English-language editor Lisa Katz's translations from the Hebrew include the forthcoming So Many Things Are Yours: selected poems of Admiel Kosman; a chapbook The Absolute Reader: Miri Ben Simhon (Toad Press, 2020);  Late Beauty: a bilingual selection of the poetry of Tuvia Ruebner, (with S. Bram) Zephyr Press (2017), a Jewish National Book Award finalist;  Suddenly the Sight of War: nationalism and violence in Hebrew poetry of the 1940s by Hannan Hever, Stanford (2016); Approaching You in English: a bilingual selection of the poetry of Admiel Kosman  (with S. Naim-Naor) Zephyr (2011); Look There: New and Selected Poems of Agi Mishol  Graywolf  (2006).  Her translations have appeared in Poetry, MPT, Guernica, Consequence, World Literature in Translation and The New York Times. She is the author of a chapbook, Are You With Me, Finishing Line (2016) and Reconstruction, a volume of her poetry in Hebrew translation, Am Oved (2008); also in 2008, she was awarded the Mississippi Review Poetry Prize and a Ledig House International Writers Residency. Katz taught literary translation at Hebrew University for a decade and most recently at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Spring 2019. In Fall 2017, she served as translator-in-residence at the University of Iowa MFA in Translation program. Her book reviews have appeared in Haaretz, Bridges and most recently in the Translation Review. Born in New York, she studied at the University of Michigan (BA English) and the City College of New York (MA Creative Writing), receiving a PhD (on the poetry of Sylvia Plath) from the English Department of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where she has lived since 1983.

TRANSLATIONS
Books

The Absolute Reader: poems of Miri Ben Simhon, Toad Press, 2020.

Late Beauty: a bilingual selection of the poetry of Tuvia Ruebner, (with S. Bram) Zephyr Press, 2017.

Suddenly the Sight of War: nationalism and violence in Hebrew poetry of the 1940s by Hannan Hever, Stanford University Press, February 2016.

Approaching You in English: a bilingual selection of the poetry of Admiel Kosman  (with S. Naim-Naor) Zephyr Press, 2011.

Look There: New and Selected Poems of Agi Mishol  Graywolf Press, a Lannan Foundation Selection, 2006. The book was featured on a PBS special "Poetry of the Middle East" February 27, 2007 and reviewed in The New York Times (Poetry Chronicle, April 23, 2006) and The Jewish Daily Forward
 

Recent translations of Poems & Essays
"Friends from good homes" Miri Ben Simhon in Modern Poetry in Translation December 2020

National Translation Month: September 2018
Translations + commentary

“Pianist” Admiel Kosman in World Literature Today Fall 2017.

“Dictate to me, Dahlia” Admiel Kosman in Ilanot Review November 2016
 
“After the horror” and “A small pillar of fire” Admiel Kosman in Modern Poetry in Translation, Fall 2016

“Voices for Freedom” Sayed Kashua in The New York Times August 19, 2016
Op-ed

Miri Ben Simhon in Poetry July-August 2016
I have never needed God

Admiel Kosman in Guernica, May 2, 2016 A SOLDIER

[“We dream that we’re asleep”] Admiel Kosman  in Consequence, Spring 2016: vol 8

“Journey” Admiel Kosman in Tikkun  September 2015

Almog Behar, “Alas, Baghdad Sits Solitary,” in World Literature Today 89:3-4 (May-August 2015)


LINKS
“Beyond Amichai” about Israeli poetry in www.tabletmag.com

Audio: Katz can be heard speaking (in Hebrew) on this radio broadcast: On Poetry and Breast Cancer, מילים שמנסות לגעת

Video: Katz interviews Poetry International Rotterdam guest poet Philip Nikolayev