THE ELAINE FEINSTEIN PAGE
Visit Elaine Feinstein's Poetry and Biography Newsgroup!
Click here for a short realaudio extract from Elaine Feinstein's reading of her poem Insomnia. This and some other readings are available in full (RealMedia) from the readings page.
You can also read an important interview with Elaine Feinstein which appeared in Poetry Nation Review (Carcanet).
Praise for Elaine Feinstein
As a poet
'She is an extraordinarily fine poet. She has a sinewy, tenacious way of penetrating and exploring her subject that seems to me unique. Her simple, clean language follows the track of the nerves. There is nothing hit or miss, nothing for effect, nothing false. Reading her poems one feels cleansed and sharpened.' TED HUGHES
As a biographer
'I can't remember when I've been thrilled by a literary biography more than PUSHKIN' Antonia Fraser, GUARDIAN
She has the rare gift of being able to write a biography that unfolds as smoothly as an old-fashioned novel' Miranda Seymour THE SUNDAY TIMES
As a novelist
Mother's Girl
'MOTHER'S GIRL grips you by the throat' --- Victoria Glendinning
'A major achievement' --- A.S.Byatt
The Border
'THE BORDER combines in a remarkable way formal elegance, raw excitement and a profound plangency' --- The SUNDAY TIMES
'Masterly... A rare intelligence of pain..' --- George Steiner , The NEW YORKER
Biography
Click here to see a complete list of Elaine Feinstein's works.
Elaine Feinstein was born in Liverpool, brought up in Leicester, and educated at Newnham College, Cambridge. She has worked as a University Lecturer, a subeditor, and a free-lance journalist. Since 1980 she has lived as a full-time writer. In the same year, she was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
She has written for The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Sunday Times, the New York Review of Books and other papers. Her versions of the great Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva---for which she received three translation awards from the Arts Council--- were first published in 1971, and remain in print from OUP/Carcanet in the UK and Penguin in USA, and were a New York Times Book of the Year. In 1990, she received a Cholmondeley Award for Poetry, and was given an Honorary D.Litt from the University of Leicester.
She has written fourteen novels; radio plays; television dramas, and five biographies; TED HUGHES: THE LIFE OF A POET (2001 was short listed for the biennial Marsh Biography Prize; her most recent biography 'ANNA OF ALL THE RUSSIAS: The Life of Anna Akhmatova came out from Weidenfeld in 2005.
She has traveled extensively; in Russia for GB/USSR in 1978; and for the British Council in France, Spain, Italy, Rumania, India, and South East Asia. In 1993 she was Writer in Residence for the British Council in Singapore, and in 1995 in Tromso on the Arctic Circle. She has been invited to read her work at festivals such as Cheltenham, Edinburgh, Charleston, and Dartington; at Universities across the United States; and at international events in Toronto, Paris, Milan, Rome, Jerusalem, Adelaide, New York, Wellington and others. She was a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow at Bellagio in 1998.
Her novels and biographies have been translated into French, Spanish, German, Italian, Danish, Hungarian, Czech, Hebrew, Russian and Chinese; and her poetry into French, Russian, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian. Her poems have been widely anthologised, and two were included in Christopher Ricks OXFORD BOOK OF ENGLISH VERSE. Her most recent books of poems are Daylight (Carcanet 1997), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, Gold (Carcanet 2000), and her poems written after the death of her husband, Arnold, TALKING TO THE DEAD (Carcanet 2007). Her COLLECTED POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS (2002) was a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation.
She has served as a Judge for the Gregory Awards, the Independent Foreign Fiction Award, the Costa Award, the Rossica Award, the Ontdaatje Award, and has been Chairman of the Judges for the T.S.Eliot Prize . Her novel THE RUSSIAN JERUSALEM is published by Carcanet in 2008.
She was awarded a Civil List Pension in recognition of services to literature in 2008.
Elaine Feinstein's email address is Elaine.Feinstein@gmail.com
Visit Elaine Feinstein's Poetry and Biography Newsgroup!