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 Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

, 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 ...

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

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

Rice University William Marsh Rice University (Rice University) is a Private university, private research university in Houston, Houston, Texas. It is on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Rice is ranke ...

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 Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

. She received her

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

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 (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

, the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

Tufts Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...

, MIT, and

CUNY , mottoeng = The education of free people is the hope of Mankind , budget = $3.6 billion , established = , type = Public university system , chancellor = Fél ...

Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City. 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. It also admi ...

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

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

, 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, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headqu ...

and in 1992, the

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

for General Nonfiction, as well as the Whiting Award. 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 land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. In 2008, she was awarded an honorary

DLitt Doctor of Letters (D.Litt., Litt.D., Latin: ' or ') is a terminal degree in the humanities that, depending on the country, is a higher doctorate after the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree or equivalent to a higher doctorate, such as the Doctor ...

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 (county), West Midlands and Warwickshire, England. The university was founded i ...

. 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 the ...

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 and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

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 Novel'' (2002) *''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) 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 Alexandra () is the feminine form of the given name Alexander (, ). Etymologically, the name is a compound of the Greek verb (; meaning 'to defend') and (; GEN , ; meaning 'man'). Thus it may be roughly translated as "defender of man" or "prot ...

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

External links

Conversation with Eva HoffmanEva 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