Marcela Sulak
Current City, State, Country
Birth City, State, Country
Biography
Marcela Sulak is the author of the lyrical memoir about translation, transformations, immigration, conversion, and farming, Mouth Full of Seeds. Her three poetry collections include, the National Jewish Book Award finalist, City of Sky Papers, Decency, and Immigrant. She’s co-edited Family Resemblance: An Anthology and Exploration of 8 Hybrid Literary Genres, and has published four book-length translations of poetry, including Twenty Girls to Envy Me. Selected Poems by Orit Gidali (University of Texas Press, 2016), which was long listed for the 2017 PEN Award for Poetry Translation. Her other translations from the Czech and French have been danced to in the Prague National Theater and have subtitled Czech animation in Warsaw and Ancy. Her poems have been posted on Washington, DC and Virginia busses and have been read at the Library of Congress. Her nonfiction has won first runner up in the Iowa Review nonfiction prize. Originally from Texas, she’s lived and worked in Venezuela, Germany, and the Czech Republic. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin, from which she worked as assistant professor of Literature at American University in Washington, DC. Now she directs the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University in Israel and edits The Ilanot Review, and hosted the TLV.1 radio podcast Israel in Translation.
What is the relationship between Judaism and/or Jewish culture and your poetry?
Published Works
Poetry
City of Sky Papers (finalist: National Jewish Book Award in Poetry, 2022; Black Lawrence Press, May, 2021)
Decency (Black Lawrence Press, 2015)
Immigrant (Black Lawrence Press, 2010)
Prose
Mouth Full of Seeds (a lyric memoir; Black Lawrence Press, 2020)
Edited Editions
Family Resemblances: An Anthology Hybrid Literatures & essays (with Jacqueline Kolosov; Rose Metal Press, 2015)
Book-Length Poetry Translations
I and Not an Angel. Selected Poems by Eli Eliahu (Currently under review)
Music of the Wide Lane and Other Poems by Sharron Hass (recipient of the 2019 National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship; Currently under review)
Twenty Girls to Envy Me. New and Selected Poems of Orit Gidali (PEN Award for Poetry in Translation finalist, 2016)
A Bouquet of National Folk Stories by Karel Jaromir Erben (from the Czech Twisted Spoon Press, 2012)
Bela-Wenda Poems from Congo-Zaire by Mutombo Nkulu-N’Sengha (Host Publications, 2011)
May by Karel Hynek Macha, from the Czech (Twisted Spoon Press, 2010, 2005)
Author Site
Links to Sample Works
Video Reading
Current Title
Education
Ph.D. University of Texas at Austin, American Literature & Poesis (2005)
MA. Villanova University, Villanova, PA, Theology and Religious Studies (1996)
MFA, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN, Creative Writing, Poetry (1992)
BA, University of Texas at Austin, Psychology and English Honors (1990)