2022 Neustadt Jury

Jennifer Croft won the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing for her illustrated memoir, Homesick, and the Man Booker International Prize for her translation from Polish of Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights. She is also the author of Serpientes y escaleras and Notes on Postcards as well as numerous pieces in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Paris Review Daily, the New York Review Daily, and elsewhere. Her other translations include Romina Paula’s August, Federico Falco’s A Perfect Cemetery, Pedro Mairal’s The Woman from Uruguay, and Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob. She holds a PhD in comparative literary studies from Northwestern University.

Tarfia Faizullah is the author of two poetry collections, Registers of Illuminated Villages (Graywolf, 2018) and Seam (SIU, 2014). In 2016 Tarfia was recognized by Harvard Law School as one of 50 Women Inspiring Change. Tarfia is a 2019 United States Artists Fellow and lives in Dallas, Texas.

Hamid Ismailov was born into a deeply religious Uzbek family of mullahs and khojas living in Kyrgyzstan, many of whom had lost their lives during the Stalin-era persecutions. Yet he received an exemplary Soviet education, graduating with distinction from both his secondary school and military college, as well as attaining university degrees in a number of disciplines. Though he could have become a high-flying Soviet or post-Soviet apparatchik, instead his fate led him to become a dissident writer and poet residing in the West. He was the BBC World Service’s first writer in residence. Critics have compared his books to the best of Russian classics, Sufi parables, and works of Western postmodernism. While his writing reflects all of these and many other strands, it is his unique intercultural experience that excites and draws the reader into his world.

Fowzia Karimi is a writer and an illustrator. Her illuminated debut novel, Above Us the Milky Way, was released in 2020. She has illustrated Faust, by Johann Wolfgang van Goethe (translated by Zsuzsanna Ozsváth and Frederick Turner); The Brick House, by Micheline Aharonian Marcom; and Vagrants and Uncommon Visitors, by A. Kendra Greene. She is a recipient of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award.

Eleni Kefala is a poet and academic from Cyprus. She is the author of Μνήμη και παραλλαγές (Memory and variations, 2007) and Χρονορραφία (Time stitches, 2013). She has been a finalist for the Diavazo First-Time Author Award in Greece and winner of the State Prize for Poetry in Cyprus. Her poetry has appeared in magazines and anthologies in Cyprus, Greece, Bulgaria, Italy, France, Turkey, and the United States, while Time Stitches is forthcoming in English, translated by Peter Constantine, from Deep Vellum. Eleni was born in Athens, grew up in Cyprus, studied in Nicosia and Cambridge, and currently makes her home in Scotland, where she teaches Latin American and comparative literature at the University of St Andrews.

R. O. Kwon’s nationally best-selling first novel, The Incendiaries, published by Riverhead, is being translated into seven languages. Named a best book of the year by over forty publications, The Incendiaries received the Housatonic Book Award and was a finalist or nominated for seven other prizes, including the National Book Critics Circle First Book Award. Kwon was named one of four “writers to watch” by the New York Times, and she has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Yaddo, and MacDowell. Kwon and Garth Greenwell co-edited the nationally best-selling Kink, an anthology published by Simon & Schuster.

Carlos Labbé is the author of nine novels, most recently Viaje a Partagua (2021). His Spiritual Choreographies, Loquela, and Navidad & Matanza are available in English translation. He also has published two short-story collections, a book of essays, and scattered poems. He co-wrote the screenplays of two feature films, Malta con huevo and El nombre. Also a musician, Labbé was part of the bands Ex Fiesta and Tornasólidos and has put out five solo albums in the streaming services. With a master’s degree in Latin American literature, Labbé works as a copyeditor and has been part of the publishing collective Sangría for twelve years.

Carlos Pintado is a Cuban American writer, playwright, and award-winning poet. His book Habitación a oscuras received the prestigious Sant Jordi’s International Prize for Poetry, and his book El azar y los tesoros was one of the finalists for Spain’s Adonais Prize. In 2014 Pintado was awarded the Paz Prize for Poetry for his new book, Nine coins / Nueve monedas, given by the National Poetry Series published by Akashic Books. Pintado’s published books include Los bosques de Mortefontaine, Habitación a oscuras, Los Nombres de la noche, El Unicornio y otros poemas, Cuaderno del falso amor impuro, Taubenschlag, and La sed del último que mira. Some of his works have been translated into English, Italian, German, French, Turkish, Portuguese, and Italian and have appeared in the New York Times, American Poetry Review, World Literature Today, Latin American Literature Today, and Vogue, among others. Classical music groups like the San Francisco Chorus, Continuum Ensemble, and the South Beach Music Ensemble have performed his poetry.

Matthew Shenoda is a writer, professor, university administrator, and author and editor of several books. His debut collection of poems, Somewhere Else (Coffee House Press), was named one of 2005’s debut books of the year by Poets & Writers magazine and was winner of a 2006 American Book Award. He is also the author of Seasons of Lotus, Seasons of Bone (BOA Editions ); editor of Duppy Conqueror: New and Selected Poems, by Kwame Dawes; and most recently author of Tahrir Suite: Poems (TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press), winner of the 2015 Arab American Book Award and, with Kwame Dawes, editor of Bearden’s Odyssey: Poets Respond to the Art of Romare Bearden (TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press, 2017). He is currently the associate provost for social equity and inclusion and professor of literary arts and studies at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where he directs the Center for Social Equity and Inclusion. Additionally, Shenoda is a founding editor of the African Poetry Book Fund.

Olga Zilberbourg’s English-language debut, Like Water and Other Stories (WTAW Press), explores “bicultural identity hilariously, poignantly,” according to the Moscow Times. Zilberbourg’s fiction and essays have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Bare Life Review, The Believer, Confrontation, Electric Literature, Lit Hub, World Literature Today, and elsewhere. Born in Leningrad, USSR, she grew up in St. Petersburg, Russia, and makes her home in San Francisco, California. Zilberbourg has published three Russian-language collections of stories, the latest of which, Хлоп-страна (The clapping land), appeared in 2016 from Moscow-based Vremya Press. She serves as a consulting editor at Narrative Magazine and as a co-facilitator of the San Francisco Writers Workshop. Together with Yelena Furman, she co-founded Punctured Lines, a feminist blog about literature from the former Soviet Union.