Nationality American/Serbian | Period 1980–present | |
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Occupation Poet, writer and translator Genre Poetry/Fiction/Criticism/Translation | ||
Maja Herman Sekulić (aka Maya Herman) (born February 17, 1949) is an internationally published poet, novelist, essayist and translator.
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Biography
Maja Herman Sekulić was born in Belgrade, Serbia, Yugoslavia, where she received her M.A. in World Literature from the University of Belgrade in 1977, and her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Princeton, New Jersey, in 1986. Besides Yugoslavia and the United States, and was schooled in England, Italy and France. She spent 1990-91 in Germany, and 1992-7 in the Far East. Nowadays, she shares her time between New York City and Belgrade. She is a member of the Serbian Literary Association, Serbian Literary Society, Serbian and the American P.E.N. Center, Academy of American Poets and the International Federation of Journalists (FIJ).
She taught at Princeton University (1985-9), and Rutgers University (1982-4), and was guest-lecturer at Harvard, Columbia, Iowa, and other universities. Besides academic work she edited journal Night in New York from 1989–90, and is a regular contributor to www.Recoursaupoeme.fr., Belgrade dailies Politika and Blic, "Cultural Journal" on Serbian TV (RTS) and other media and literary journals.
Translations
Maja Herman Sekulić is actively involved on introducing Serbian literature to English speaking world and building bridges between cultures with her excellent literary translations in both English and Serbian. She was invited to be the editor of an Anthology of Modern Yugoslav Poetry (Micromegas, Iowa, 1985); her translations of Serbian poets were included in five poetry anthologies in English of which the most important is Serbian Poetry from Beginnings to the Present, edited by Holton and Mihailovich, (Yale, New Haven, 1988). As a superb connoisseur of Anglo-American and world literature, she published many reviews, essays, prefaces and edited and translated a number of books by classics as well as younger authors such as Bret Easton Ellis’ The Rules of Attraction in two editions (BIGZ, 1989, Laguna, 2009). Since 1976, when as a student, she wrote her first introduction and made a selection of poems by Jure Kaštelan (Rad, Beograd) to this day she translated books of two Nobel prize winners such as Saul Bellow (Dangling Man) and Patrick White (Selected Stories) and she edited and translated into Serbian the first major collection of Wallace Stevens' poems (Pesme našeg podneblja, Matica Srpska/Pismo, 1995). With her translations and essays she was often the first to introduce new names and critical notions in Serbian language and culture. Among such contributions are her translation and postface to Harold Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence (Antiteticka kritika,); her selection, preface and translations of Northrop Frye's essays under title Myth and Structure (Mit I struktura, Svjetlost, Sarajevo, 1991) ISBN 978-86-01-03087-9, as well as her translation and postface to Raymond Carver's Cathedral(Katedrala, Narodna Knjiga, Beograd).
Fellowships and Grants
For her work she was awarded a number of exceptionally prestigious fellowships and grants such as Princeton University Fellowship (5 years), Fulbright Visiting Scholar (twice) and American Association of University Women (AAUW) Grant.