Jennifer Croft

Croft grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she entered the University of Tulsa at age 15.{{Cite news|url=https://www.tulsaworld.com/archive/wise-beyond-her-years/article_9135f9e4-6105-5237-a863-7a98f074d030.html|title=Wise Beyond Her Years|last=Krehbiel|first=Randy|work=Tulsa World|access-date=2019-11-04}} After completing her BA at the University of Tulsa in 2001,{{Cite web|url=https://artsandsciences.utulsa.edu/croft-man-booker/|title=TU Alumna Jennifer Croft Won the Man Booker International Prize|website=The University of Tulsa|date=16 May 2018 |access-date=2019-11-04}} she learned Polish at the University of Iowa, where she did her MFA in literary translation. She lived in Warsaw, Poland for two years on a Fulbright scholarship. As she said in one of her interviews, "Polish has always been more of an academic and professional connection for me, but I try to go back to Kraków or Warsaw at least once a year to maintain that connection".{{Cite news|url=https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/dispatches/article/the-translator-relay-jennifer-croft-jessie-chaffee|title=The Translator Relay: Jennifer Croft - Words Without Borders|last=Chaffee|first=Jessie|work=Words Without Borders|access-date=2018-05-28}} It was during her time in Warsaw that she met author Olga Tokarczuk with whom she worked on the novels Flights{{cite web |last1=Croft |first1=Jennifer |title=Seriously Entertaining: Jennifer Croft on "You Don't Say" |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3BbcaeLVg8 |website=YouTube |publisher=House of Speakeasy}} and The Books of Jacob, along with essays and short stories.

She learned her Spanish in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and says of her work translating Argentine Spanish,

I only translate works from Spanish that were written by Argentine authors—there’s such great diversity among the different Spanishes, and I’ve always felt it’s really important to be fully familiar with all the little components of speech, the quotidian rhythms writers employ and depart from. It's important for me to be able to hear the tone of a sentence, picture the facial expression and gestures that would accompany it, in order to find a fitting rendition in English.

Croft is married to Ukrainian-American poet and translator Boris Dralyuk. They have twins who were born in 2022.{{Cite web |title=Author and translator Jennifer Croft on challenging preconceived notions – The Creative Independent |url=https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/author-and-translator-jennifer-croft-on-challenging-preconceived-notions/ |access-date=2025-06-08 |website=thecreativeindependent.com |language=en}}

Croft translated Romina Paula's August (Feminist Press, 2017), Federico Falco's A Perfect Cemetery (Charco Press, 2021), Pedro Mairal's The Woman from Uruguay (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021), Tina Oziewicz's What Feelings Do When No One's Looking (Elsewhere Editions, 2022), Sylvia Molloy's Dislocations (Charco Press, 2022), and Sebastián Martínez Daniell's Two Sherpas (Charco Press, 2023). Her translation of Tokarczuk's Flights from Polish was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in May 2017.{{cite web|title=Contributor: Jennifer Croft|url=https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/contributor/jennifer-croft|website=(Words without Borders), The Online Magazine for International Literature|access-date=23 May 2018}} Croft has also translated Tokarczuk's novel Księgi Jakubowe (The Books of Jacob), which won the Nike Award in 2015.{{cite news |date=22 May 2018 |title=Man Booker International Prize: Olga Tokarczuk is first Polish winner |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-44219438 |access-date=23 May 2018 |publisher=BBC News}}{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/09/books/olga-tokarczuk-flights-booker.html|title=Olga Tokarczuk's Book 'Flights' Is Taking Off|work=The New York Times |date=9 August 2018 |access-date=2018-08-13|language=en |last1=Grey |first1=Tobias }}

With her essay in The Guardian, "Why translators should be named on book covers,"{{Cite web|last=Croft|first=Jennifer|date=2021-09-10|title=Why translators should be named on book covers|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/sep/10/why-translators-should-be-named-on-book-covers|access-date=2021-10-25|website=The Guardian|language=en}} Croft launched the #TranslatorsOnTheCover campaign in cooperation with the Society of Authors and the author Mark Haddon.{{Cite web|title=#TranslatorsOnTheCover - sign the open letter|url=https://www2.societyofauthors.org/translators-on-the-cover/|access-date=2021-10-25|website=The Society of Authors|date=30 September 2021 |language=en-GB}} The campaign has raised awareness of the collaborative nature of translated literature by foregrounding the identity of the translator, who, Croft argues, is the person who writes every word of the translated work.

Her debut novel The Extinction of Irena Rey was published in 2024.{{Cite book |last=Croft |first=Jennifer |title=The Extinction of Irena Rey |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |year=2024 |isbn=9781639731701}}{{Cite web |date=2024-02-27 |title=A Kind of Shape-Shifting: A Conversation with Jennifer Croft |url=https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-kind-of-shape-shifting-a-conversation-with-jenny-croft |access-date=2024-03-08 |website=Los Angeles Review of Books}}{{Cite web |last=Alter |first=Alexandra |date=February 11, 2022 |title=Shining a Spotlight on the Art of Translation |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/11/books/literary-translation-translators-jennifer-croft.html |website=The New York Times}} Publishers Weekly wrote that Croft, "serves up a wickedly funny mystery involving an internationally famous author and her translators".{{Cite web |date=November 27, 2023 |title=The Extinction of Irena Rey by Jennifer Croft |url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/9781639731701 |access-date=2024-03-07 |website=www.publishersweekly.com}} Croft began writing the novel, which was inspired by a trip to the Bialowieza Forest on the border of Poland and Belarus, in 2017.{{Cite news |last=Simon |first=Scott |title=Jennifer Croft talks about her novel 'The Extinction of Irena Rey' |url=https://www.npr.org/2024/03/02/1235517914/jennifer-croft-talks-about-her-novel-the-extinction-of-irena-rae |access-date=March 7, 2024 |work=NPR}}

Croft is the recipient of Guggenheim, Cullman, Fulbright, PEN, MacDowell, Fondation Jan Michalski, Yaddo, and National Endowment for the Arts grants and fellowships, as well as the inaugural Michael Henry Heim Prize for Translation and a Tin House Scholarship for Homesick.

With the author Olga Tokarczuk, Croft won the 2018 Man Booker International Prize.

File:Man Booker International Prize 2018 by Janie Airey.jpg OBE, chair of the judges for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize]]

On being asked what drew her to the writer's work, Jennifer Croft has said,

I stumbled upon Olga Tokarczuk’s first short-story collection, Playing Many Drums, in 2003 as I prepared for a Fulbright at the University of Warsaw, where I would continue to study literary translation. Right away I loved her soothing, nuanced style, but I think the thing that appealed to me most was her psychological acuity, her ability to distill the essence of a person—I say "person" since her characters are so alive it’s hard for me to call them characters—and set in motion relationships that might charm and shock us at the same time, all while feeling both familiar and fresh.

Tokarczuk calls Flights a "constellation" novel, which partly means she brings lots of different ideas and stories and voices into relationship with one another via the lines the reader draws between them. This made the translation process both challenging and particularly delightful, since I was able to tap into a fresh subject every time I sat down to my computer. One minute I was worrying about the woman who flies back to Poland from New Zealand to kill a dying childhood friend; the next I was amused by the foibles of the Internet; the next I was rethinking my own approach to travel, or to my body. I could go on and on. I loved translating this book.{{Cite news|url=https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/dispatches/article/2018-man-booker-international-prize-qa-jennifer-croft-eric-m-b-becker|title=2018 Man Booker International Prize Q&A—Jennifer Croft - Words Without Borders|last=Becker|first=Eric M. B.|work=Words Without Borders|access-date=2018-05-28}}

In March 2022, Croft's translation of Tokarczuk's The Books of Jacob was longlisted for the 2022 Man Booker International Prize.{{Cite web |title=The 2022 International Booker Prize {{!}} Longlist announcement |url=https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/prize-years/international/2022 |access-date=2022-04-08 |website=The Booker Prizes}} subsequently being shortlisted in April.{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/apr/07/international-booker-prize-shortlist|title=International Booker prize shortlist delivers 'awe and exhilaration'|first=Lucy|last=Knight|newspaper=The Guardian|date=2022-04-07}}

Croft received the 2020 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing for her illustrated memoir Homesick, which was originally written as a novel in Spanish in 2014 and was published in Argentina under its original title, Serpientes y escaleras. According to Croft, "Neither the Spanish nor the English is a translation."{{Cite web |last=Meyer |first=Lily |date=September 15, 2019 |title='Homesick' Is A Boundary-Expanding Story Of Devotion And Growing Up |url=https://www.npr.org/2019/09/15/760613901/homesick-is-a-boundary-expanding-story-of-devotion-and-growing-up |access-date=March 8, 2024 |website=NPR}} In 2022, she was also awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for her novel The Extinction of Irena Rey, which was published by Bloomsbury on March 5, 2024.{{Cite web |title=Jennifer Croft |url=https://www.gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/jennifer-croft/ |access-date=2022-04-23 |website=John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation |language=en-US}} Her short story "Anaheim," published by The Kenyon Review, was nominated for a 2023 Pushcart Prize.{{Cite web |title=Anaheim {{!}} Journal |url=https://kenyonreview.org/journal/marapr-2022/selections/jennifer-croft/ |access-date=2023-01-15 |website=The Kenyon Review |language=en}}

Croft was awarded a 2023 American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in literature.

File:Jennifer_Croft_holding_The_Extinction_of_Irena_Rey.jpg

• {{Cite book |last=Croft |first=Jennifer |title=Homesick |publisher=Unnamed Press |year=2019 |isbn=978-1-944700-94-2 |location=Los Angeles |author-mask=1}}
• {{Cite book |last=Croft |first=Jennifer |title=Serpientes y escaleras |publisher=Editorial Entropía |year=2021 |isbn=978-987-1768-69-1 |location=Buenos Aires |author-mask=1}}
• {{Cite book |last=Croft |first=Jennifer |title=The Extinction of Irena Rey |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |year=2024 |isbn=978-1-63973-170-1 |location=New York |author-mask=1}}

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