Gander, Forrest

Forrest Gander

Adele Kellenberg Seaver '49 Professor Emeritus of Creative Writing, Professor Emeritus of Literary Arts, and Professor Emeritus of Comparitive Literature

Overview

Forrest Gander, the Adele Kellenberg Seaver Professor of Literary Arts and Comparative Literature, has degrees in geology and English. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of more than a dozen books, including the novels The Trace and As a Friend, now translated into half a dozen languages, Gander writes across the genres. His collection Be With won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize; Core Samples from the World (a National Book Critics Circle and 2012 Pulitzer Prize finalist), is concerned with the way identity is translated by encounters with the foreign. The editor of several anthologies of poetry from Spain and Latin America, Gander is also a well known translator: Spectacle & Pigsty by Kiwao Nomura won the 2012 Best Translated Book Award. In a collection of essays, A Faithful Existence, Gander explores evolution, literary hoaxes, snapping turtles, and border crossings. He is a United States Artists Rockefeller Fellow and recipient of fellowships from the Library of Congress, the Guggenheim, Howard, and Whiting Foundations.

Brown Affiliations

Literary Arts

Research Areas

On the Web

Forrest Gander's website

Publications Visualize it

Panic Cure: Poetry from Spain for the 21st Century. Otis Books, 2014.

Pinholes in the Night: Essential Poems from Latin America. Copper Canyon, 2014.

The Trace. New Directions, 2014.

Eiko & Koma. New Direcdtions, 2013.

Fungus Skull Eye Wing: Selected Poems of Alfonso D'Aquino. Copper Canyon, 2013.

Gander, Forrest. "Projecting Love." The Baffler, vol. 20, 2012, pp. 105-105.

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Redstart: An Ecological Poetics. University of Iowa, 2012.

Core Samples from the World. New Directions, 2011.

Gander, Forrest. "The Transparency of Faithful Existence." Manoa, vol. 23, no. 2, 2011, pp. 78-81.

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GANDER, FORREST. "Breath." Critical Quarterly, vol. 52, no. 4, 2010, pp. 63-63.

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LÓPEZ-COLOMÉ, PURA, GANDER, FORREST. "Come On In." Critical Quarterly, vol. 51, no. 3, 2009, pp. 103-104.

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Gander, Forrest. "of sum." CANG, vol. 14, no. 2, 2009, pp. 7-13.

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LÓPEZ-COLOMÉ, PURA, GANDER, FORREST. "Tongue-and-grooved." Critical Quarterly, vol. 51, no. 3, 2009, pp. 100-102.

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Colomé, Pura López, Gander, Forrest. "Year One Rabbit: Light Year Hare." Translation Review, vol. 77-78, no. 1, 2009, pp. 85-89.

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Research

Research Overview

I write fiction, poetry, essays and other works not readily characterized within genre boundaries, and I translate (mostly Hispanic) literature. In all these activities, I am concerned with ethical questions: what kind of experience and relationship does language articulate, what account of the suffering and joy of others does imagination avail, what qualities of expression, thought, and feeling can be translated from one culture and language to another?

Research Statement

I have a background in geology and am alarmed enough by the current state of the world to be focused on environmental politics. I'm interested in an ecological literature in which events are structured as collaborations between the world and the self and related not only at the level of reference, but through syntax, diction, and rhythms. Core Samples from the World is a book length meditation on what it means to be a foreigner, what it means to be "at home." In my book of poems, Eye Against Eye, intimacy and intervention are prevailing themes. What is involved in the construction of a circumscribed world at the personal or national level and what forces impinge upon it? The social pull to be a part of something and the individual need to be apart force us to make decisions, including ones concerned with the way language is used, that have profound ethical implications.

Scholarly Work

It Must Be a Misunderstanding, Poems by Coral Bracho, New Directions, 2021

Twice Alive, poems, New Directions, 2021

Be With, poems, New Directions, 2018

The Galloping Hour: Pizarnik's French Poems (with Patricio Ferrari), New Directions, 2018

The Trace, a novel, New Directions, 2014

Pinholes in the Night: Essential Poems from Latin America (with Raúl Zurita), Copper Canyon, 2014

Skull Fungus Eye Wing: Selected Poems of Alfonso D'Aquino, Copper Canyon, 2014

Panic Cure: Poetry from Spain for the 21st Century, Shearsman Books (UK), 2013/ Otis Editions (USA), 2014

Eiko & Koma, poems, New Directions, 2013

Redstart: an Environmental Poetics (with John Kinsella), University of Iowa, 2013

Spectacle and Pigsty, poems by Kiwao Nomura (translated with Kyoko Yoshida), OmniDawn, 2012

Watchword, poems by Pura López Colomé, Wesleyan University Press, 2011

Core Samples from the World, (poetry, haibun, photographs), New Directions, 2011

My Floating Mother City, Kazuko Shiraishi, poems translated by Samuel Grolmes & Yumiko Tsumura, with additional translations by Tomoyuki Endo & Forrest Gander

Firefly Under the Tongue, Selected Poems of Coral Bracho, New Directions, 2008

As a Friend, novel, New Directions, 2008

The Night, A Poem by Jaime Saenz, (with Kent Johnson), Princeton University Press, 2007

Connecting Lines: New Poetry from Mexico, translation editor, Sarabande Books, 2006

A Faithful Existence: Reading, Memory, & Transcendence, (essays) Shoemaker and Hoard, 2005

Eye Against Eye, (poems) New Directions, 2005

Another Kind of Tenderness, Xue Di (with Keith Waldrop, et. al.), Litmus Press, 2004

The Blue Rock Collection, (poems) Salt Editions (England & U.S.), 2004, 2005

No Shelter: The Selected Poems of Pura López Colomé, Graywolf Press, 2002

Immanent Visitor: Selected Poems of Jaime Saenz, (with Kent Johnson), U of CA Press, 2002

The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You, editor, second edition, Lost Roads Publishers, 2001

Torn Awake, (poems) New Directions, 2001

Science & Steepleflower, (poems) New Directions, 1998

Deeds of Utmost Kindness, (poems) Wesleyan University Press, 1994

Mouth To Mouth: Poems by 12 Contemporary Mexican Women, editor, Milkweed Editions, 1993

Lynchburg, (poems) University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993

Rush To The Lake, (poems) Alice James Books, 1988

Ten Significant American Poets, editor, Azduzbina Petar Kocic Publishing House, Bosnia-Herzegovina, forthcoming

Background

Education and Training

Year	Degree	Institution
1981	MA	San Francisco State University
1978	BS	College of William and Mary

Honors and Awards

Pulitzer Prize in poetry, 2019
Poetry East West Award, 2018
Pulitzer Prize Finalist, 2012
Best Translated Book Award (for Spectacle & Pigsty: Selected Poems of Kiwao Nomura), 2012
National Book Critics Circle Finalist, 2011
Witter Bynner/Library of Congress Fellowship, 2011
United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship, 2008
John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, 2008
Howard Foundation Fellowship, 2005
PEN Translation Fund Award, 2004
National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, 2001 & 1998
Pushcart Prize, 2000
Jessica Nobel Maxwell Memorial Prize, American Poetry Review , 1998
Gertrude Stein Award in Innovative North American Poetry, 1997 and 1993
Fund for Poetry Award, 1994

Researchers@Brown

Researchers@Brown

Forrest Gander

Adele Kellenberg Seaver '49 Professor Emeritus of Creative Writing, Professor Emeritus of Literary Arts, and Professor Emeritus of Comparitive Literature

Overview

Brown Affiliations

Research Areas

On the Web

Publications Visualize it

Research

Research Overview

Research Statement

Scholarly Work

Background

Education and Training

Honors and Awards

Affiliations Visualize it

Affiliations

Teaching

Teaching Overview

Teaching