:Jana Prikryl

Jana Prikryl was born in Ostrava, now in the Czech Republic. Aged five, in 1980, her parents took her and her elder brother on a 'holiday' to the Dalmatian coast of the then Yugoslavia, but diverted to Zagreb, obtained four-day tourist visas to Austria with passports valid only for travel to Yugoslavia, and, after some time in Austria, moved to Canada when Jana was six.{{cite news |last1=Whitlock |first1=Nathan |title=Jana Prikryl on creating home in poetry, even in Trump's America |url=https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/2019/07/11/jana-prikryl-on-creating-home-in-poetry-even-in-trumps-america.html |access-date=20 February 2021 |work=Toronto Star |publisher=Toronto Star Newspapers Ltd |date=11 July 2019 |ref=TorontoStar |language=en}}{{cite news |last1=Simic |first1=Charles |title=The Consolations of Strangeness |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/08/18/jana-prikryl-consolations-of-strangeness/ |work=The New York Review of Books |date=18 August 2016 |ref=NYRB2016 |language=en}} The family settled in Hamilton, Ontario, where Prikryl attended Ancaster High School.{{cite news |last1=Mahoney |first1=Jeff |title=Celebration of Jana Prikryl's The After Party unanimously superlative |url=https://www.toronto.com/news-story/7225891-mahoney-celebration-of-jana-prikryl-s-the-after-party-unanimously-superlative/ |access-date=20 February 2021 |work=Toronto.com |date=4 April 2017 |language=en-CA}}

Prikryl learned Czech, then German, with English as her third language after her family moved to Canada.{{cite web |last1=Lee |first1=Jonathan |title=Surrendering to Your Own Maneuvers: An Interview with Jana Prikryl |url=https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/06/21/surrendering-to-your-own-maneuvers/ |website=The Paris Review |access-date=20 February 2021 |ref=ParisReview2016 |language=en |date=21 June 2016}}{{cite news |title=Jana Prikryl: 'It is important to remember the strange shapes you think you see in things' |url=https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/jana-prikryl-it-is-important-to-remember-the-strange-shapes-you-think-you-see-in-things/article31463653/ |access-date=20 February 2021 |work=The Globe and Mail |date=19 August 2016 |ref=GlobeAndMail}} She now considers English to be her first language, and still speaks Czech.

She graduated with a BA in English from the University of Toronto. After time living in Dublin, Prikryl moved to New York in 2003 to study for an MA in cultural reporting and criticism from New York University.{{cite web |title=Jana Prikryl |url=https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/jana-prikryl |website=Poetry Foundation |publisher=PoetryFoundation |access-date=20 February 2021 |ref=PoetryFoundation |language=en |date=20 February 2021}}{{cite web |title=Jana Prikryl |url=https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/people/jana-prikryl |website=Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University |access-date=20 February 2021 |language=en}}{{cite news |last1=Donaldson |first1=Emily |title=Jana Prikryl uses the anger she felt after the 2016 election to inform her new poem collection No Matter |url=https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books/article-jana-prikryl-uses-the-anger-she-felt-after-the-2016-election-to-inform/ |access-date=20 February 2021 |work=The Globe and Mail |date=20 August 2019 |ref=GlobeAndMail2019}}

Following graduation, Prikryl worked at The New York Review of Books, initially as an intern. She became a senior editor,{{cite web |title=The Future of New York: The 2020 Robert B. Silvers Lecture |url=https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/12/08/the-future-of-new-york-the-2020-robert-b-silvers-lecture/ |website=The New York Review |access-date=20 February 2021 |date=8 December 2020 }} and in February 2021, she was named executive editor.{{Cite web|last=Greenhouse|first=Emily|date=2021-02-22|title=I'm enormously honored to have been named the editor of @nybooks, and also thrilled that Jana Prikryl will become executive editor, Daniel Drake production editor, and Maya Chung associate editor.|url=https://twitter.com/emserre/status/1363878743949914119|access-date=2021-02-26|website=Twitter}}

As an essayist, her writings on photography and film have been published in the Nation and the New York Review.{{cite web |title=Jana Prikryl |url=https://www.thenation.com/authors/jana-prikryl/ |website=The Nation |access-date=20 February 2021 |date=2 April 2010}}

Her poetry and criticism has been published in the New Yorker, the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books, the Paris Review, the Nation, and the Baffler, in two collections - The After Party and No Matter, and three anthologies, Best American Poetry 2020, Best Canadian poetry 2020, and 'The unprofessionals : new American writing from the Paris Review (2015).

Her first book, The After Party was published in 2016.{{cite magazine |last1=Chiasson |first1=Dan |title=Poetry of a Childhood Lost |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/08/08/the-after-party-by-jana-prikryl |access-date=20 February 2021 |magazine=The New Yorker |date=1 August 2016 |issue=August 8 & 15, 2016 |language=en-us}} Reviewers considered her a "notably resourceful writer of autobiography", with an "understated sensibility"{{cite news |last1=Brouwer |first1=Joel |title=Time-Traveling Poems Consider the Self in Its Many Guises (Published 2016) |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/24/books/review/jana-prikryl-the-after-party-poems.html |access-date=20 February 2021 |work=The New York Times |date=22 July 2016}} Themes include the Canadian landscape, "Ideas of in-betweenness", childhood and folklore.

No Matter (2019) was mainly written while a 2017–2018 Radcliffe Institute Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Described as "restless, unsettled, elusive and dark" by the Toronto Star, No Matter was named one of the best poetry books of the year by the New York Times,{{cite news |last1=Orr |first1=David |title=The Best Poetry Books of 2019 (Published 2019) |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/books/review/the-best-poetry-books-of-2019.html |access-date=21 February 2021 |work=The New York Times |date=20 December 2019}} and was chosen as one of the best books of the year 2019 in the New Statesman.{{cite news |title=Books of the year |url=https://www.newstatesman.com/best-books-this-year-2019 |access-date=20 February 2021 |work=New Statesman |date=13 November 2019 |language=en}}

As of 2019, she lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., with her husband, performing artist, Colin Gee, and their son, Nicholas, born in 2016. She became a U.S. Citizen in 2016.{{cite web |title=Ten Questions for Jana Prikryl |url=https://www.pw.org/content/ten_questions_for_jana_prikryl |website=Poets & Writers |access-date=20 February 2021 |language=en |date=23 July 2019}} Her mother, Marcela Prikryl, is a materials scientist, artist, and courtroom sketch artist for the Hamilton Spectator.{{cite web |title=Marcela Prikryl |url=https://carnegiegallery.org/marcela-prikryl/ |website=Carnegie Gallery |access-date=20 February 2021}} Prikryl's older brother died in an automobile accident in 1995 at the age of 27, and her first book, The After Party is dedicated to him.

Prikryl won a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship. She was a 2017–2018 Radcliffe Institute Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard.

Prikryl has received a fellowship from Yaddo,{{Cite web|url=https://www.yaddo.org/artists/artist-guests/writers/|title=Writers – Yaddo|access-date=21 February 2021|archive-date=2 April 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190402180806/https://www.yaddo.org/artists/artist-guests/writers/|url-status=dead}} and a Creative Writing Grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.

• {{cite book |last1=Prikryl |first1=Jana |title=The after party : poems |date=2016 |location=New York |isbn=9781101906231 |url=https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/535069/the-after-party-by-jana-prikryl/}}
• {{cite book |last1=Prikryl |first1=Jana |title=No matter : poems |date=2019 |location=New York |isbn=9781984825117 |url=https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/605155/no-matter-by-jana-prikryl/}}
• {{cite book |last1=Prikryl |first1=Jana |title=Midwood : poems|date=2022 |location=New York |isbn=9781324035213 |url=https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324035213}}

• {{cite book |editor1-last=Rekdal |editor1-first=Paisley |title=The best American poetry 2020 |date=2020 |publisher=Simon and Schuster |location=New York |isbn=9781982106591}}
• {{cite book |title=Best Canadian poetry, 2020 |date=2020 |location=Windsor, Ontario |isbn=9781771963640 |edition=First|last1=Dumont |first1=Marilyn }}
• {{cite book |title=The unprofessionals : new American writing from the Paris Review |date=2015 |publisher=Penguin Books |location=New York, New York |isbn=9780698408920 |url=https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/318903/the-unprofessionals-by-the-paris-review/}}

{{reflist}}

• {{official website|https://janaprikryl.tumblr.com/}}
• [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/jana-prikryl Profile at Poetry Foundation]

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Category:Living people

Category:American women poets

Category:Writers from Ostrava

Category:University of Toronto alumni

Category:The New York Review of Books people

Category:New York University alumni

Category:21st-century American poets

Category:21st-century American women writers

Category:Czechoslovak emigrants to the United States

Category:Czechoslovak refugees

Category:1975 births