Terese Svoboda  

A native of Ogallala, Nebraska, writer Terese Svoboda has studied at Manhattan College, Stanford University, Oxford University, the University of Colorado, the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, and Montreal University of Fine Arts. She graduated from the University of British Columbia and went on to earn her M.A. at Columbia University. Svoboda lived for a year in the Sudan, making documentary films and translating the songs of the Nuer people.

Svoboda’s best known novel, Cannibal, won the Bobst Prize and the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writer’s Award and was chosen as one of the top ten books of the year by Spin. Her story “Party Girl” was a finalist in the 1995 Mississippi Review Prize competition. Svoboda also authored a book of nonfiction, Black Glasses Like Clark Kent, which won the 2007 Graywolf Nonfiction Prize. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Antioch Review, APR, Columbia, Conjunctions, Georgetown Review, Harper’s, Paris Review, The New Yorker, Noon, Ohio Review, Vogue, and The Wall Street Journal. Some of Svoboda’s other works include Treason, A Drink Called Paradise, and Trailer Girl and Other Stories. Svoboda has translated some of her written work, particularly her poetry, into film. These poetry videos have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and broadcast nationally on PBS. Svoboda has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, The New School, the University of Hawaii, Williams College, San Francisco State University, and the College of William and Mary. She currently lives with her husband and children in New York City’s Chinatown. (10/09)