Karen Alkalay-Gut is an award-winning poet, professor, and editor who lives in Israel and writes in English.
Personal life
Born in London on the last night of the Blitz buzz bombs, Alkalay-Gut moved with her parents and brother Joseph Rosenstein to Rochester, New York in 1948. She graduated from the University of Rochester, with a BA with honors, and an MA in English literature in 1967. From 1967–70 she taught at the State University of New York at Geneseo before returning to complete her doctorate. In 1972 she moved to Israel and began teaching at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev. In 1977 she moved to Tel Aviv University, where she continued to teach. She is married to Ezra Gut and does not number her children and grandchildren because it gives too much information to the evil eye.
Work
In 1980 her first collection, Making Love: Poems appeared with the aid and editorial assistance of poet David Avidan, and she has published over twenty books since. Her poetry has also appeared in Hebrew, French, Arabic, Yiddish, Rumanian, Polish, Russian, German, Turkish, Persian and Italian. Her concern with multimedia has brought about collaborations with fashion houses such as Comme il faut, as well as sculpture, graffiti, ceremonies. Her translations of Hebrew poetry such Yehuda Amichai and Rony Sommek have numbered in the hundreds. As a critic, Alkalay-Gut is the author of a biography of Adelaide Crapsey as well as numerous articles on Victorian and contemporary literature. She has participated in numerous anthologies, encyclopedias and edited volumes. She has also translated poetry and drama from Hebrew and other languages, including Yehuda Amichai, Raquel Chalfi, and Hanoch Levin. In 1980 Alkalay-Gut helped found the Israel Association of Writers in English, and functioned as chair from 1995-2015. She returned to chair in 2018. She also served as vice-chair of the Federation of Writers' Unions, and as an editor of the Jerusalem Review. Alkalay-Gut has appeared in venues such as the Library of Congress and Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the U.N. and the Yale Club in New York, The Einav Center, Beit Avihai, the Willy Brandt Center, Mishkenot Shaananim and the Writers House in Israel, as well as many universities, churches, synagogues and nightclub around the world. In 2019 she was awarded the Leib Rubinlicht award for her contribution to Yiddish Literature. In 2018 she was listed by the Jewish Agency as number 24 of one hundred Jews who moved from Britain to help shape the modern state of Israel. Among her previous awards are the Jewish Agency Award in 1994, and first in the BBC World Service Poetry Award.
