Zsófia Bán


Zsófia Bán is a writer, literary historian, essayist and art and literature critic.

Personal life

Zsófia Bán grew up in Rio de Janeiro as the child of Jewish parents. In 1969, she and her family returned to Hungary where she studied English language and Literature as well as Romance Studies in Budapest, Lisbon, Minneapolis and New Brunswick. She has worked in film studios, curated art exhibitions, was a fellow at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and at the John-F.-Kennedy-Institut in Berlin, a Fulbright Fellow at Harvard University, as well as a writer-in-residence in Zug, Switzerland, among other residencies. From August 2015 to July 2016 Bán was a writer-in-residence at the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program.
She lives and works in Budapest, where she is Associate Professor of American Studies at Eötvös Loránd University.

Writing

Zsófia Bán’s writing often addresses topics related to visuality, visual arts, photography, personal and cultural memory, historical trauma, as well as gender. She has written a number of essays related to the topic of literature and visuality, including those on W.G. Sebald, Susan Sontag, Imre Kertész and Péter Nádas.
Her short stories and essays have been widely anthologized, and translated to a number of languages, including German, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Slovakian and Slovenian.

Fiction

Zsófia Bán also regularly publishes critical pieces on literature and visual art, as well as op-eds in magazines and newspapers.

Prizes

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