Steven G. Kellman (born November 15, 1947) is an American critic and

academic An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, ...

, best known for his books ''Redemption:The Life of Henry Roth'' (2005) and ''The Translingual Imagination'' (2000).

Life and career

Kellman was born in Brooklyn, New York. A graduate of Harpur College at Binghamton University (1967), he received his M.A. and Ph.D. in comparative literature from the

University of California at 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 uni ...

in 1969 and 1972, respectively. Kellman has taught at the University of California campuses at Irvine and Berkeley. In 1976, he joined the faculty of the University of Texas at San Antonio, where he was the university's first Ashbel Smith Professor, from 1995-2000, and is currently a professor of comparative literature, specializing in fiction, film, and criticism. He was named Jack & Laura Richmond Endowed Faculty Fellow in American Literature in 2023. He was a Fulbright Senior Lecturer at Tbilisi State University in 1980 and held the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in American Literature at the University of Sofia in 2000. He is married to the poet

Wendy Barker Wendy Barker (September 22, 1942 – March 11, 2023) was an American poet. She was Poet-in-Residence and the Pearl LeWinn Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where she taught since 1982. Biography Barker was bo ...

. The weekly column that Kellman wrote for the San Antonio Light from 1983 until the newspaper's demise in 1993 won the H. L. Mencken Award in 1986. He is a contributing writer for ''

The Texas Observer ''The Texas Observer'' (also known as the ''Observer'') is an American magazine with a liberal political outlook. The ''Observer'' is published bimonthly by a 501(c)(3)San Antonio Current The San Antonio ''Current'' is a free weekly alternative newspaper in San Antonio, Texas. The ''Current'' focuses on investigative journalism, political analysis, and critical coverage of local music and culture. It also contains extensive and u ...

''. His film reviews were awarded first place in arts criticism by the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies in 2006. His essays and reviews have appeared in ''The American Scholar'', ''Atlantic Monthly'', ''Bookforum'', ''Huffingtonpost.com'', ''Forward'', ''Southwest Review'', ''Michigan Quarterly Review'', ''New York Times Book Review'', ''Georgia Review'', ''The Nation'', ''San Francisco Chronicle'', ''Los Angeles Times'', ''Chicago Tribune'', ''Atlanta Journal Constitution'', ''Gettysburg Review'', and ''Virginia Quarterly Review'', among many other publications. In 2007, he was awarded the

National Book Critics Circle The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) is an American nonprofit organization (501(c)(3)) with more than 700 members. It is the professional association of American book review editors and critics, known primarily for the National Book Critics C ...

Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing The Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, established in 1991, is an annual literary award presented by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to honor Nona Balakian Nona Balakian ( Armenian: Նոնա Պալագեան, Constantinop ...

. Kellman was founding president of the literary center Gemini Ink and was elected into membership in the Texas Institute of Letters. He served two terms on the board of directors of the National Book Critics Circle, from 1996-2002, and began his third term in 2009. He began his fourth term in 2012. In 2010, he began serving as Vice President for Membership of the NBCC. He was a finalist for the Kukula Award for excellence in nonfiction reviewing in 2023. Kellman's first book, ''The Self-Begetting Novel'', appeared in 1980 and examines a subgenre of modern metafiction in which the protagonist ends up writing the novel in which he appears. ''Loving Reading: Erotics of the Text'' (1985) is a study in reader theory that explores the analogy between reading and making love. In two books, ''The Translingual Imagination'' (2000) - which Peter Bush in the Times Literary Supplement called “a passionately eloquent narrative of a new translingual world behind the English Curtain" - and ''Switching Languages: Translingual Writers Reflect on Their Craft'' (2003), Kellman surveyed the phenomenon of writers who write in more than one language or in a language other than their primary one. He provided further reflections on literary translingualism in ''Nimble Tongues'' (2020). His biography of the author of the 1934 novel ''Call It Sleep'', ''Redemption: The Life of Henry Roth'' (2005), received the New York Society Library Award for Biography and was hailed by Josh Lambert in the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' as “not only a necessary addition to the annals of American literature, but also a trenchant exploration of the relationship between the horrors of life and the saving power of art." ''American Suite: A Literary History of the United States'', Kellman's first book of poems, appeared in 2018. ''The Restless Ilan Stavans: Outsider on the Inside,'' the first book-length study of the prominent public intellectual

Ilan Stavans Ilan Stavans (born Ilan Stavchansky on April 7, 1961) is a Mexican-American author and academic. He writes and speaks on American, Hispanic, and Jewish cultures. He is the author of ''Quixote'' (2015) and a contributor to the ''Norton Anthology ...

, appeared in 2019. Kellman's selected essays, ''Rambling Prose,'' appeared in 2020.

Books

* ''The Self-Begetting Novel'', 1980, New York: Columbia University Press, 1980, London: Macmillan * ''Loving Reading: Erotics of the Text'', 1985, Hamden, Conn.: Archon * ''Approaches to Teaching Camus’s The Plague'', (editor), 1985, New York: Modern Language Association * ''The Plague: Fiction and Resistance'', 1993, Boston: Twayne * ''Perspectives on Raging Bull'', 1994, (editor), New York: G. K. Hall * ''Into "The Tunnel": Readings of Gass’s Novel'', 1998, (co-editor), Newark: University of Delaware Press * ''Leslie Fiedler and American Culture'', 1999, (co-editor), Newark: University of Delaware Press * ''The Translingual Imagination'', 2000, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press * ''Torpid Smoke: The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov'', 2000, (co-editor), Amsterdam: Rodopi * ''Magill’s Literary Annual'', 2001–present, (co-editor), Pasadena: Salem Press * ''Underwords: Perspectives on Don DeLillo’s Underworld'', 2002, (co-editor), Newark: University of Delaware Press * ''Switching Languages: Translingual Writers Reflect on Their Craft'', 2003, (editor), Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press * ''Redemption: The Life of Henry Roth'', 2005, New York: W. W. Norton * ''Magill’s Survey of American Literature'', rev. ed., 2007, (editor), Pasadena: Salem Press * ''Magill’s Survey of World Literature'', rev. ed., 2009, (editor), Pasadena: Salem Press * ''M. E. Ravage, An American in the Making'', (editor), 2009, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press * ''Critical Insights: Albert Camus'', (editor), 2011, Pasadena: Salem Press * ''American Suite: A Literary History of the United States. 2018, Georgetown, KY: Finishing Line Press * ''The Restless Ilan Stavans: Outsider on the Inside.'' 2019, Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press * ''Nimble Tongues: Studies in Literary Translingualism.'' 2020, West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press * ''Rambling Prose: Essays.'' 2020, San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press * ''The Routledge Handbook of Literary Translingualism.'' 2021, (co-editor), New York: Routledge

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kellman, Steven G. 1947 births American essayists American literary critics Harpur College alumni Living people Writers from Brooklyn Academics from Brooklyn University of California, Berkeley alumni University of Texas at San Antonio people University of Texas faculty American male essayists Journalists from New York City James Madison High School (Brooklyn) alumni