Rika Lesser
{{short description|American poet (born 1953)}}
{{infobox writer
|name=Rika Lesser
|birth_date={{birth year and age|1953}}
|birth_place=New York City, U.S.
|occupation={{flatlist|
- Poet
- translator
}}
|nationality=American
|education=Yale University
University of Gothenburg
Columbia University (MFA)
}}
Rika Lesser (born 1953 Brooklyn, New York) is an American poet, and is a translator of Swedish and German literary works.
Life
Lesser earned her bachelor's degree at Yale University in 1974. She studied at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden from 1974 to 1975 and received her MFA from Columbia University in 1977.{{Cite book|title=International Who's Who in Poetry 2005|publisher=Routledge|year=2004|isbn=978-1857432695|pages=930–931}} She has produced four collections of her own poetry, including Etruscan Things (1983), and her prose translations include A Living Soul by P. C. Jersild and Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse.
Awards
In 1982, she was awarded the Landon Poetry Translation Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and received the Poetry Translation Prize of the Swedish Academy in 1996 and in 2003.
Works
=Poetry=
- {{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ESVoAbuM5BwC&dq=Rika+Lesser&pg=PP1| title=Growing back: poems, 1972-1992| publisher=University of South Carolina Press| year=1997| isbn=978-1-57003-233-2 }}
- {{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WXNVKNssPYQC&dq=Rika+Lesser&pg=PP1| title=All we need of hell: poems| publisher=University of North Texas Press| year=1995| isbn=978-0-929398-92-1 }}
- {{cite book| title=Etruscan things: poems| publisher=G. Braziller| year=1983| isbn=978-0-8076-1058-9| url=https://archive.org/details/etruscanthingspo00less}}
- {{cite book| url=http://www.sheepmeadowpress.com/lesser-rika| title=Questions of Love: New and Selected Poems| publisher= Sheep Meadow Press|year=2008| isbn=978-1-9313-5760-9}}
=Translations=
- {{cite book| title=Guide to the Underworld| author=Gunnar Ekelöf| author-link=Gunnar Ekelöf| others=Translator Rika Lesser| publisher=University of Massachusetts Press| year=1980| isbn=978-0-87023-306-7| url=https://archive.org/details/guidetounderworl00ekel}}
- Hansel and Gretel (1984) (Illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky)
- {{cite book| title=Between Roots-selected Poems Rendered from German| author=Rainer Maria Rilke| author-link=Rainer Maria Rilke| others=Translator Rika Lesser| publisher=s.n.| year=1986 }}
- {{cite book| title=The Hideout / Sigrid Heuck| others=Translator Rika Lesser| author=Sigrid Heuck| author-link=Sigrid Heuck| publisher=Douglas & McIntyre, Limited| year=1988| isbn=978-0-88833-266-0| url=https://archive.org/details/hideout0000heuc}}
- {{cite book|last=Sonnevi|first=Goran|others=tr. & ed.: Lesser, Rika|title=A Child Is Not a Knife: Selected Poems of Goran Sonnevi|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=id9UnzqEye8C&pg=PP1|access-date=September 21, 2012|date=February 22, 1993|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=978-0-691-01543-9}}
References
{{Reflist}}
- {{cite web|url=http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/646/prmID/366|title=Lesser, Rika|publisher=PEN American Center|access-date=2007-11-11|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070807224623/http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/646/prmID/366|archive-date=2007-08-07}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lesser, Rika}}
Category:Swedish–English translators
Category:German–English translators
Category:20th-century American poets
Category:20th-century American women writers
Category:21st-century American women
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