Idra Novey

Career

Novey is a novelist, poet, and translator. She is the author of the novels Take What You Need (2023), a New York Times Notable Book, Ways to Disappear (2016) and Those Who Knew (2018), which received the 2017 Sami Rohr Prize, the 2016 Brooklyn Eagles Prize, and was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize for First Fiction. Those Who Knew was also a finalist for the 2019 Clark Fiction Prize, a New York Times Editors' Choice, and a Best Book of the Year with over a dozen media outlets, including NPR, Esquire, BBC, Kirkus Review, and O Magazine. Her poetry collections include Exit, Civilian (2011), selected for the 2011 National Poetry Series, The Next Country (2008), a finalist for the 2008 Foreword Book of the Year Award, and Clarice: The Visitor, a collaboration with the artist Erica Baum. Her fiction and poetry have been translated into a dozen languages and she's written for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, New York Magazine, and The Paris Review. She is the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Poets & Writers Magazine, the PEN Translation Fund, the Poetry Foundation, and The Pushcart Prize. Her works as a translator include Clarice Lispector's novel The Passion According to G.H. and a co-translation with Ahmad Nadalizadeh of Iranian poet , Lean Against This Late Hour, a finalist for the PEN America Poetry in Translation Prize in 2021. She teaches fiction in the MFA Program at NYU and at Princeton University.

She is the most recent translator of The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector, On Elegance While Sleeping by Viscount Lascano Tegui, Birds for a Demolition by Manoel de Barros, and The Clean Shirt of It by Paulo Henriques Britto. With Ahmad Nadalizadeh, she has co-translated from Persian a collection of Iranian poet Garous Abdolmalekian, entitled Lean Against This Late Hour (2020).

Her fiction and poetry have been translated into ten languages, and she has received awards from Poets & Writers*,* the Poetry Foundation, the Brooklyn Eagles Literary Prize, and the National Endowment of the Arts.

Personal life

Idra grew up in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, one of four siblings. She graduated from Barnard College, and from Columbia University. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.

Published works

Novels

• Ways to Disappear (Little, Brown & Company, 2016)
• Those Who Knew (Viking Books, 2018)
• Take What You Need (Viking Books, 2023)

Full-length poetry collections

• The Next Country Alice James Books, 2008.
• Soon and Wholly, Wesleyan University Press, September 2024.

Chapbooks and cahiers

• The Next Country (Poetry Society of America, 2005)
• Clarice: The Visitor, with images by Erica Baum (Sylph Editions, 2014)

Translations

• Dark Period, by Garous Abdolmalekian in The New York Times Magazine, co-translated with Ahmad Nadalizadeh.
• Oh! by Luis Muñoz for Poem-a-Day, co-translated with Garth Greenwell.
• The Clean Shirt of It, by Paulo Henriques Britto BOA Editions, Ltd., 2007.
• On Elegance While Sleeping, by Emilio Lascano Tegui (Dalkey Archive, 2010.
• Birds for a Demolition, by Manoel de Barros Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2010.
• The Passion According to G.H., by Clarice Lispector New Directions, 2012.
• Lean Against This Late Hour, by Garous Abdolmalekian, co-translated with Ahmad Nadalizadeh, Penguin Press, 2020.

Short stories

• "The Man from the Ad" (Guernica, 2011)
• "The Specialist" (StoryQuarterly, 2015)
• "Under the Lid" (The American Scholar, 2016)
• "Husband and Wife During the Nightly News" (The Yale Review, Winter 2019)
• "Harmony, Interrupted" (The Chronicles of Now, 2020)
• "The Glacier" (The Yale Review, Summer 2021, winner of a 2022 Pushcart Prize)
• "Conversations with My Father" (Granta, 2023)

Selected poems

• "The Visitor" (Poetry Foundation, 2012)
• "La Prima Victoria" (Poetry Foundation, 2012)
• "On Returning to My Hometown in 2035" (Poetry Foundation, 2014)
• "The Duck Shit at Clarion Creek" (Poetry Foundation, 2014)
• "House-Sitting With Approaching Fire" (Guernica, 2014)
• "Still Life With Invisible Canoe" (Academy of American Poets, 2015)
• "Nearly" (Poets.org, 2019)
• "Night Sky with Blue Silo and a Bonfire" (A Public Space, 2022)
• "That's How Far I'd Drive for It" (Poetry Foundation, 2023)

Nonfiction

• "‘Change Your Life,’ the Poet Says, and a Rural Idyll Offers a Tantalizing Choice" (The New York Times, 2018)
• "New Narratives and Discards" (Orion Magazine, March 2023)
• "Monstrous Hybrids and the Conjuring of Legacy" (Yale Review, 2023)

Honors and Awards

• 2005 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Series Fellowship for The Next Country
• 2007 Kinereth Gensler Award for The Next Country
• 2007 PEN Translation Fund Grant from PEN American Center for The Clean Shirt of It
• 2009 NEA Literature Fellowship for Translation
• 2011 Best Translated Book Award (shortlisted) for On Elegance While Sleeping
• 2011 National Poetry Series for Exit, Civilian
• 2016 Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction (finalist) for Ways to Disappear
• 2016 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award for Ways to Disappear
• 2016 Brooklyn Eagles Literary Prize for Ways to Disappear
• 2017 Sami Rohr Prize for Ways to Disappear
• 2022 Pushcart Prize for "The Glacier", Yale Review

References

References

1. Brown, Emma. [http://www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/idra-novey-16-faces-of-2016/ "Culture: The Mystery Writer,"] ''[[Interview (magazine). Interview]]'' (Dec. 31, 2015).
2. [http://barnard.edu/news/celebrating-barnards-artists-1 "Celebrating Barnard's Artists,"] {{Webarchive. link. (2016-03-16 ''Barnard Magazine'' (Dec. 5, 2014))
3. Moss, Sarah. (2023-03-13). "A Novel of Messy Relationships — Like the America It's Set In". The New York Times.
4. (July 28, 2023). "Take What You Need — a major novel of contemporary America".
5. Berry, Lorraine. (2023-03-14). "Idra Novey's new novel proves fiction can be worth a thousand think pieces".
6. , a New York Times Notable Book,
7. Dustin Illingworth. (April 1, 2016). "The vapor between languages: Idra Novey on writing and translation". LA Times Books.
8. Barbara Hoffert. (May 14, 2018). "Sophisticated Reads: Fiction Previews, Nov. 2018". Library Journal.
9. (January 16, 2019). "'Those Who Knew' by Idra Novey addresses the 'patriarchal messages we have been marinating in'". The Washington Post.
10. (16 January 2019). "How to Tell an Open Secret".
11. (November 18, 2018). "Book Review: 'Those Who Knew'".
12. (2018-11-08). "A popular senator hides his violent ways in a novel that feels eerily prescient". [[The Washington Post]].
13. "Winners".
14. (24 October 2016). "Brooklyn Public Library Announces Winners of Second Annual Brooklyn Eagles Literary Prize".
15. (22 February 2017). "L.A. Times Book Prize finalists include Zadie Smith and Rep. John Lewis; Thomas McGuane will be honored".
16. (5 November 2018). "Idra Novey Wrote a #MeToo Novel Before the #MeToo Movement". Wall Street Journal.
17. (July 2021). "Rebecca Makkai wins 2019 Clark Fiction Prize for 'The Great Believers'".
18. "NPR's Book Concierge".
19. "Idra Novey". Penguin Random House.
20. "Literary Roundup {{!}} Barnard College".
21. "WRI_Alumna Idra Novey Wins $100,000 Sami Rohr Prize".
22. "Idra Novey".
23. (2016-08-18). "Idra Novey: 'I wanted to burn down the house of fiction'".
24. "Review {{!}} A popular senator hides his violent ways in a novel that feels eerily prescient". Washington Post.
25. Moss, Sarah. (2023-03-13). "A Novel of Messy Relationships — Like the America It's Set In". The New York Times.
26. Frank, Joan. "A mysterious rift propels the story in 'Take What You Need'". [[The Washington Post]].
27. (10 May 2022). "1/ We're so thrilled to announce that four of our contributors have won 2022 Puschart Prizes! Congratulations to…".
28. [http://www.poetrysociety.org/psa/awards/chapbook_fellowship/?action=list Poetry Society of America > Chapbook Fellowships > Past Winners]
29. [http://www.alicejamesbooks.org/winners.html Alice James Books > Past Award Winners] {{webarchive. link. (2008-07-09)
30. [http://www.pen.org/page.php/prmID/396 PEN American Center > Translation Fund Grants] {{webarchive. link. (2012-06-27)
31. [https://web.archive.org/web/20091201035346/http://www.nea.gov/Grants/recent/09grants/LitTranslation.html National Endowment for the Arts 2009 Grant Awards: Literature Fellowships for Translation Projects]
32. [http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=3757 2011 Best Translated Book Award: Fiction Longlist]
33. (2017). "Previous Los Angeles Times Book Prizes Winners & Finalists".
34. Miwa Messer. (December 2, 2015). "Announcing the Discover Great New Writers Spring 2016 Selections". Barnes & Noble.
35. (October 22, 2016). "Brooklyn Public Library Announces Winners of Second Annual Brooklyn Eagles Literary Prize". Brooklyn Public Library.
36. (May 3, 2017). "Idra Novey wins Sami Rohr prize for Jewish literature". Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
37. (10 May 2022). "1/ We're so thrilled to announce that four of our contributors have won 2022 Pushcart Prizes! Congratulations to…".