Jana Prikryl

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Jana Prikryl
Born1975 (age 48–49)
Ostrava, Czechoslovakia
OccupationPoet, writer, critic
LanguageEnglish
CitizenshipAmerican
Education University of Toronto
New York University
GenrePoetry
Notable awards Guggenheim Fellowship (2020)
Website
janaprikryl.tumblr.com

Jana Prikryl, born in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia in 1975, [1] is a poet, critic and editor. In 2020, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. [2]

Contents

Early life and education

Jana Prikryl was born in Ostrava, now in the Czech Republic. [3] 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. [1] [3] [4] The family settled in Hamilton, Ontario, where Prikryl attended Ancaster High School. [5]

Prikryl learned Czech, then German, with English as her third language after her family moved to Canada. [6] [7] She now considers English to be her first language, and still speaks Czech. [6]

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. [4] [8] [9] [10]

Career

Following graduation, Prikryl worked at The New York Review of Books , initially as an intern. [5] She became a senior editor, [3] [11] and in February 2021, she was named executive editor. [12]

As an essayist, her writings on photography and film have been published in the Nation and the New York Review. [4] [13]

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, [8] 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. [14] Reviewers considered her a "notably resourceful writer of autobiography", [14] with an "understated sensibility" [15] Themes include the Canadian landscape, "Ideas of in-betweenness", [14] childhood and folklore. [14]

No Matter (2019) was mainly written while a 2017–2018 Radcliffe Institute Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. [3] [16] Described as "restless, unsettled, elusive and dark" by the Toronto Star, [3] No Matter was named one of the best poetry books of the year by the New York Times, [17] and was chosen as one of the best books of the year 2019 in the New Statesman. [18]

Personal life

As of 2019, she lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., with her husband, performing artist, Colin Gee, and their son, Nicholas, born in 2016. [3] [5] [10] [16] She became a U.S. Citizen in 2016. [16] Her mother, Marcela Prikryl, is a materials scientist, artist, and courtroom sketch artist for the Hamilton Spectator. [5] [19] 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. [14] [5]

Awards and recognition

Prikryl won a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship. [2] She was a 2017–2018 Radcliffe Institute Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. [9]

Prikryl has received a fellowship from Yaddo, [20] and a Creative Writing Grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. [8]

Bibliography

Collections

Anthologies (as contributor)

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References

  1. 1 2 Rekdal, Paisley, ed. (2020). The best American poetry 2020. New York: Simon and Schuster. p. 246. ISBN   9781982106591.
  2. 1 2 "Jana Prikryl". John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. Retrieved 20 February 2021.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Whitlock, Nathan (11 July 2019). "Jana Prikryl on creating home in poetry, even in Trump's America". Toronto Star. Toronto Star Newspapers Ltd. Retrieved 20 February 2021.
  4. 1 2 3 Simic, Charles (18 August 2016). "The Consolations of Strangeness". The New York Review of Books.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Mahoney, Jeff (4 April 2017). "Celebration of Jana Prikryl's The After Party unanimously superlative". Toronto.com. Retrieved 20 February 2021.
  6. 1 2 Lee, Jonathan (21 June 2016). "Surrendering to Your Own Maneuvers: An Interview with Jana Prikryl". The Paris Review. Retrieved 20 February 2021.
  7. ↑ "Jana Prikryl: 'It is important to remember the strange shapes you think you see in things'". The Globe and Mail. 19 August 2016. Retrieved 20 February 2021.
  8. 1 2 3 "Jana Prikryl". Poetry Foundation. PoetryFoundation. 20 February 2021. Retrieved 20 February 2021.
  9. 1 2 "Jana Prikryl". Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. Retrieved 20 February 2021.
  10. 1 2 Donaldson, Emily (20 August 2019). "Jana Prikryl uses the anger she felt after the 2016 election to inform her new poem collection No Matter". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 20 February 2021.
  11. ↑ "The Future of New York: The 2020 Robert B. Silvers Lecture". The New York Review. 8 December 2020. Retrieved 20 February 2021.
  12. ↑ Greenhouse, Emily (22 February 2021). "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". Twitter. Retrieved 26 February 2021.
  13. ↑ "Jana Prikryl". The Nation. 2 April 2010. Retrieved 20 February 2021.
  14. 1 2 3 4 5 Chiasson, Dan (1 August 2016). "Poetry of a Childhood Lost". The New Yorker. No. August 8 & 15, 2016. Retrieved 20 February 2021.
  15. ↑ Brouwer, Joel (22 July 2016). "Time-Traveling Poems Consider the Self in Its Many Guises (Published 2016)". The New York Times. Retrieved 20 February 2021.
  16. 1 2 3 "Ten Questions for Jana Prikryl". Poets & Writers. 23 July 2019. Retrieved 20 February 2021.
  17. ↑ Orr, David (20 December 2019). "The Best Poetry Books of 2019 (Published 2019)". The New York Times. Retrieved 21 February 2021.
  18. ↑ "Books of the year". New Statesman. 13 November 2019. Retrieved 20 February 2021.
  19. ↑ "Marcela Prikryl". Carnegie Gallery. Retrieved 20 February 2021.
  20. ↑ "Writers – Yaddo".
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