Career
She is the Frances Hooper Professor in the Arts and Humanities and Chair of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Northwestern University. An acclaimed translator of contemporary Polish poetry, she is currently under contract to write the authorized biography of Czesław Miłosz. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy from Harvard University (1978, 1981 and 1988 respectively).
Before coming to Northwestern University, she taught at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Her work has been translated into Russian, Polish, Hungarian, French, Dutch, Chinese, and Japanese. the William Riley Parker Prize of the Modern Language Association. The AATSEEL Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Book in Slavic Literature.
The Ilchester Lecture in Slavonic Literatures, Oxford University. The John Frederick Nims Memorial Prize in Translation.
The Katharine Washburne Memorial Lecture in Translation.
The Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists association/Book-of-the Month Club Prize for Outstanding Literary Translation. The AATSEEL Award for Outstanding Translation from a Slavic Language.