Terese Svoboda is an American poet, novelist, memoirist, short story writer, librettist, translator, biographer, critic and videomaker.
Career Svoboda is the author of nine books of poetry, eight novels, three collections of short fiction, a biography, two memoirs and a book of translations from the Nuer.
She graduated from Columbia University School of the Arts. She was Distinguished Writer in Residence at University of Hawaii. and McGee Visiting professor of writing at Davidson College. Wichita State Distinguished Writer in Residence, University of Miami, Columbia University School of the Arts. Atlantic Center for the Arts Pabst Endowed Chair,
The opera Wet, for which she wrote the libretto, premiered at RedCat at L.A. Disney Hall in 2005. Her fourteen works in video have won numerous awards and are distributed worldwide. In writing about her work, reviewers have noted her frequent use of humor to address dire subjects, her interest in fabulism, and her lyrical use of language, especially as a poet writing prose.
An ardent unconventional feminist, she often writes about women in the Midwest in a way that has been termed "exotic, sophisticated, and heartbreaking." Her travels for the Smithsonian's Anthropology Film Archive to the South Pacific and the South Sudan provide additional settings. Postwar Japan is the location for her memoir about executions of U.S. servicemen by U.S. authorities.
Her work has appeared in AGNI, Granta, The New Yorker, The Atlantic,AUBADE, by Terese Svoboda, The Atlantic Online, July 1998 Poetry, The New York Times,A Dark Glittering Novel Imagines The Earth's Final Hours, The NY Times, May 28, 2019 Narrative, Slate,Terese Svoboda, author at SLATE magazine Paris Review. The New York Post described her memoir, Black Glasses Like Clark Kent as "astounding";Required Reading, by Billy Heller, New York Post, January 27, 2008. The Washington Post regarded her biography Anything That Burns You as "magisterial."How copyright law hides work like Zora Neale Hurston's new book from the public, by Ted Genoways, The Washington Post, May 7, 2018.
South Sudan After translating the songs of the Nuer people of the South Sudan on a PEN/Columbia Fellowship, she founded a scholarship for Nuer high school students in Nebraska. She was consulting producer for "The Quilted Conscience," a PBS documentary on South Sudanese girls learning to quilt with Nebraskan women.
Critical reception Hailed as one of "our best writers" by Karen Russell,Jessie Shohfi about 'Dog on Fire' by Terese Svoboda, Columbia University School of the Arts, 2022. her fiction has been likened to Lauren Groff, Helen DeWitt, George Saunders, and Amy Hempel. Her career was discussed at the 'LILAC: Laboratoire interuniversitaire de littérature américaine contemporaine' at the Sorbonne University. Her second memoir, Hitler and My Mother-in-Law, received a Publishers Weekly star."Hitler and My Mother-in-Law: A Memoir", Publishers Weekly, August 13, 2025. Roxy and Coco, her most recent novel and first speculative, and The Long Swim, her third story collection, were praised in a full page of the New York Times Book Review.The New York Times about The Long Swim, March 8, 2024.
Electric Lit said of 'Dog on Fire' that it was "a richly imagined novel from a writer at the top of her form."[15 Small Press Books You Should Be Reading This Summer], Electric Lit, June 30, 2023. Praised by Karen Russell in Esquire,Karen Russell Wants to Understand the Monsters Around Us, Esquire, May 14, 2019. Great American Desert was also lauded by the Los Angeles Review of Books.To Dust You Return: On Terese Svoboda's Great American Desert, Los Angeles Review of Books, March 2019. Emily St. John Mandel wrote on The Millions that Pirate Talk and Mermalade was "a strange and nastily beautiful book" and that Tin God is the work of "a true original."[Staff Pick: Terese Svoboda's Tin God, by Emily St. John Mandel], The Millions, April 2, 2013. Bohemian Girl was one of 10 Best Westerns of 2012, according to Booklist.Bohemian Girl, by Terese Svoboda, 2011, Booklist, 2011. Cannibal, her first novel, was deemed "a woman's Heart of Darkness in Vogue. Cleaned the Crocodile's Teeth, Translation of Nuer Song was chosen for the New York Times Writer's Choice column,Crows and Taxis: Writing to the South Sudan, by Terese Svoboda, The Rumpus, January 14, 2011. and praised by Anthropos with "She approaches the Nuer not as an alien, exotic society but as people whose artistic expression may hold meaning and pleasure for any reader."
Brooklyn Rail said of her Selected Poems, When the Next Big War Blows Down the Valley: "Terese Svoboda is one of few contemporary American writers who possesses a global consciousness."The Global and the Local, by Tony Leuzzi, Brooklyn Rail, December 2015. Her book of poetry, Theatrix: Poetry Plays was cited by Compulsive Reader as "witty, irreverent, provocative,"A review of Theatrix: Poetry Plays by Terese Svoboda, by Charles Rammelkamp, Compulsive Reader, January 31, 2021. and Virginia Konchan wrote that "Theatrix: Poetry Plays is a tour de force collection that explodes our notion of the fourth wall."Theatrix: Poetry Plays by Terese Svoboda, Ahinga Press
Entropy included it in 'Best of 2020-2021 Poetry Books'. Compulsive Reader also quotes The Bloomsbury Review'''s comment that Svoboda is "one of those writers you would be tempted to read regardless of the setting or the period or the plot or even the genre." In addition to the libretto for WET, many of her poems have been set to music, including 'Orlando' as "gun gun gun" by Errolyn Wallen performed at the Crypt on the Green in London and recorded on the Hermes Experiment Album Here We Are.Hermes Experiment Album Here We Are Three of her books have been reissued.
Cary Nelson, editor of the Anthology of American Poetry, said of her biography Anything That Burns You: A Portrait of Lola Ridge, Radical Poet: "No one who cares about American culture will want to miss this book."[Anything That Burns You, by Terese Svoboda ], Schaffner Press Svoboda also provided the afterword for Willa Cather's My Antonia (Signet Classics, 2014); and the introduction to Genevieve Taggard To Test the Joy: Selected Poems and Prose (Boiler House Press, 2023).[Buried twice. Rediscovering Genevieve Taggard, a poet of her time], The Times Literary Supplement, September 27, 2024. She is a board member of Women Writing Women's Lives.
Selected awards 1973 Hannah del Vecchio Award in Playwriting 1974 PEN/Columbia Translation Fellow 1978 National Endowment for the Humanities grant in translation 1983 Creative Artist Public Service fellow 1985 Emily Dickinson Award, Poetry Society of America 1987 Cecil Hemley Award, Poetry Society of America 1988 Jerome Foundation Fellow 1990 Iowa Poetry Prize 1990 Appleman Foundation grant for video 1990 New York State Council for the Arts grant for video 1992 Margaret Sanger: A Public Nuisance, co-director/writer of an ITVS-produced video selected by The Getty as one of the best two experimental biographies of the decade 1994 Bobst Prize and the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award 1998, 1993 New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship 1998 Walter E. Dakin Fellow in fiction, Sewanee Writing Conference 2003 Pushcart Prize for an essay 2005 Appleman Foundation for WET libretto 2007 Graywolf Nonfiction Prize 2008 Best of Japan 2008 in the Japan Times for Black Glasses Like Clark Kent2013 Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction 2013 Money for Women Barbara Deming Memorial Fund 2015 James Merrill House Fellowship 2024 Juniper Prize 2025 Literary Awards Program Winner, Santa Fe Writers Project.Santa Fe Writers Project, 2025 Literary Awards Program Winner
Video Svoboda's video work include exhibition in 'Exchange and Evolution' as part of the Getty's Pacific Standard Time exhibition at RedCat, Ars Electronica, PBS, MoMA, WNYC, L.A.C.E., Lifestyle TV, Berlin Videofest, Art Institute of Chicago, CalArts, AFI, Long Beach Museum of Art, New American Makers, Athens Film Festival, Ohio Film Festival, American Film Festival, Atlanta Film Festival (Director's Choice), L.A. Freewaves, Pacific Film Archives, Columbus Film Festival, and Worldwide Video Festival. She was awarded a Jerome Foundation Award in Film and VideoJerome Foundation Award, 1989 and an early Independent Television Service (ITVS) grantWomen Make Movies - Margaret Sanger. A Public Nuisance, directed by Terese Svoboda and Steve Bull, 1992 from the Corporation of Public Broadcasting for her work in media. She also co-curated 'Between Word and Image' for the Museum of Modern Art and Poets House, an exhibition that traveled to Banff and the Northwest Film Center. Her work is distributed by Vtape.
Bibliography Poetry All Aberration. / / eBook All Aberration. Poems by Terese Svoboda, University of Georgia Press, 2009.Laughing Africa. Iowa Prize in Poetry, / / eMere Mortals. / Treason / Weapons Grade. / Dogs Are Not Cats (chapbook). When the Next Big War Blows Down the Valley: Selected and New Poems. / Professor Harriman's Steam Air-Ship. Theatrix: Poetry Plays.
Novels Cannibal. Bobst Prize and the Great Lakes Colleges Association First Fiction Prize, A Drink Called Paradise. / Tin God. John Gardner Fiction book Award Finalist, Pirate Talk or Mermalade. Bohemian Girl. Booklist Ten Best Westerns 2012, Dog on Fire. Roxy and Coco.
Short fiction Trailer Girl and Other Stories. / The New York Times about TRAILER GIRL. And Other Stories, March 11, 2001Great American Desert. The Long Swim. Juniper Prize for Fiction Terese Svoboda '78 Dives Deep with Award-Winning Collection 'The Long Swim', by Carlos Barragan, Columbia University School of the Arts, March 6, 2024.
Non-fiction BiographyAnything That Burns You: A Portrait of Lola Ridge, Radical Poet. MemoirsBlack Glasses Like Clark Kent. Graywolf Nonfiction Prize Hitler and My Mother-in-Law TranslationsCleaned the Crocodile's Teeth'' (Nuer)
References
External links Author's Website Terese Svoboda on Fictionaut Poetry Foundation - Caned Video History Project, Terese Svoboda Poets & Writers, Terese Svoboda
Like Prions: An Interview with Terese Svoboda by Shya Scanlon, November 9, 2009