Teresa D. Lewis is an American translator, writer, and essayist. She is best known for her translation of French author

Christine Angot Christine Angot (born 7 February 1959) is a French novelist, playwright and screenwriter. Life Born Pierrette Marie-Clotilde Schwartz (Schwartz being her mother's name) in Châteauroux, Indre, she is perhaps best known for her 1999 novel ''L'I ...

's novel, ''

Incest Incest ( ) is human sexual activity between family members or close relatives. This typically includes sexual activity between people in consanguinity (blood relations), and sometimes those related by affinity (marriage or stepfamily), adoption ...

'' which was nominated for the Best Translated Book Award. She has also translated works by

Peter Handke Peter Handke (; born 6 December 1942) is an 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 explored t ...

Walter Benjamin Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist. An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, and Jewish mys ...

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

, 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 federal ...

. She is a graduate of the

University of Notre Dame The University of Notre Dame du Lac, known simply as Notre Dame ( ) or ND, is a private Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, outside the city of South Bend. French priest Edward Sorin founded the school in 1842. The main campu ...

and received the

Rhodes Scholarship The Rhodes Scholarship is an international postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom. Established in 1902, it is the oldest graduate scholarship in the world. It is considered among the world' ...

to the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

, 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'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...

'', ''

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 194 ...

'', ''

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

'', ''

The American Scholar "The American Scholar" was a speech given by Ralph Waldo Emerson on August 31, 1837, to the 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 gr ...

'', and ''

Bookforum ''Bookforum'' is an American book review magazine devoted to books and the discussion of literature that was based in New York City, New York. The magazine was founded in 1994 and announced in December of 2022 it would cease publishing after ...

.'' 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 Alois Hotschnig (born 3 October 1959) is an Austrian writer, whose stories have been described as having "the weird, creepy, and ambiguous quality of disturbing dreams". He first studied medicine, then German and English in Innsbruck. He was winn ...

Melinda Nadj Abonji Melinda Nadj Abonji (born 22 June 1968 in Bečej, Yugoslavia) is a Hungarian-Swiss writer, musician, and performance artist. Melinda Nadj Abonji was born in the Hungarian part of Vojvodina, in present-day Serbia. She came to Switzerland at the age ...

, 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 Jean-Luc Benoziglio (19 November 1941 – 5 December 2013) was a Swiss-French writer and publishing editor. Born in Monthey, Valais, Benoziglio studied at the University of Lausanne before dropping out. Among the features of Benoziglios works in ...

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 Bruckner ...

Maja Haderlap Maja Haderlap (born 8 March 1961 in Eisenkappel-Vellach ( sl, Železna Kapla-Bela, Carinthia) is a bilingual Slovenian-German Austrian writer, best known for her multiple-award-winning novel, Angel of Oblivion, about the Slovene ethnic minority ...

, 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 hav ...

. 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 is an American literary award that recognizes the previous year's best original translation into English, one book of poetry and one of fiction. It was inaugurated in 2008 and is conferred by Three Percent, the onlin ...

. In a review in the ''New Yorker'', critic H.C. Wilentz praised Lewis' 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' 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 Ludwig Hohl (9 April 1904 – 3 November 1980) was a Swiss writer writing in the German language. Outside of literary mainstream, he spent most of his life in extreme poverty. He is still unknown to a wider public but has been praised by severa ...

’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 Karl-Markus Gauß (born 14 May 1954, in Salzburg) is an Austrian contemporary writer, essayist and editor.In one single interview, Gauß by joke characterized himself ''to be an independent scholar.'' The interviewer, not being aware of this allusi ...

Translated works

* (2008)

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

, ''One hundred days'' (German to English, London : Granta) * (2011)

, ''Ludwig’s Room'' (German 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. Overview His first book, ''Papirnik'' (Suhrkamp, 1994), was a collection of short stories, most of them set in ...

, ''Elsewhere'' (German to English, London : Haus Publishing Ltd) * (2014)

, 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)

: ''Angel of Oblivion'' (German to English, Brooklyn, NY : Archipelago Books) * (2017)

, ''

'' (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. Life and work Lutz Seiler grew up in the Langenberg district of Gera, Thuringia (former East Germany). After training as a skilled building construction worker, h ...

, ''Kruso'' (German to English, Scribe Publications) * (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) * (2020)

Jonas Lüscher Jonas Lüscher (born 22 October 1976 in Schlieren) is a Swiss-German writer and essayist. Early life Lüscher grew up in Bern where he later trained between 1994 and 1998 at the Muristalden Evangelical Teacher Training School (''Evangelische Le ...

, ''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) * (2023)

, '' On the Marble Cliffs'' (German to English, New York, NY: New York Review of 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

’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

* 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 ''Stern 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