When Jennifer Croft first came to The University of Tulsa as an undergraduate, she was 15 years old. A homeschooled student who also attended TU’s small University School for gifted children, Croft says she was a bit unprepared for the life of a college student.
Fast forward a few decades, and Croft (BA ’01) is enjoying working at TU as a presidential professor.
“It was a challenging experience for me,” she says of her teen years at TU. She would go on to graduate magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in English and Russian and a minor in creative writing before earning her master’s degree from the University of Iowa and doctorate from Northwestern University.
“It feels really great to be back in completely different circumstances – just to also have the ability now to give opportunities to students.”
Croft, who is also an acclaimed professional literary translator, is teaching creative writing at TU. She says her students are learning about contemporary Asian-American writers from Argentina to Canada. Her students are currently reading a Japanese-Peruvian novel that has been translated into English.
“We’re trying to just think about what these categories mean: What is the category of Asian? What about American?” she says. “So far, we’ve had a lot of really great conversations. And students are slowly evolving characters for a short story they’re going to write as their final project that deals with issues of identity and complexities of identity that are close to them and important to them to talk about.”
Identity is one element of Croft’s work as a literary translator. As such, she sees a lack of diversity in the U.S. publishing field.
“Even though we talk about diversity in the publishing world, we’re still just talking about the English language, American writers. And that’s absolutely not diversity,” she says.
Meanwhile, Croft works to bring more inclusion to her work. Some of her upcoming translations include “The Plains” by Federico Falco, which was translated from Spanish. She partnered with her husband, fellow translator, and TU faculty member, Boris Dralyuk, to translate “Who Will Make the Snow?” by Mariana Prokhasko from Ukrainian.
Croft also has a novel coming out in 2024 from Bloomsbury and Scribe UK. “The Extinction of Irena Rey” focuses on translators and helps advocate for the profession, Croft says.
“Translating is a part of the publishing world that has been marginalized and underpaid and underrepresented,” she says. “This book allows me to talk a lot about those issues. I’m excited about that.”
Croft was awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship to help complete her book project. She has received other awards as well, including the International Booker Prize for translating “Flights” and the William Saroyan Prize for her first book, “Homesick.”
She says she’s grateful for her time at TU, first as an undergraduate and now as a presidential professor of English & creative writing.
“I think that I wouldn’t have been a translator had it not been for TU,” she says. “The important professors at TU were Yevgeny Yevtushenko, a renowned Russian poet; Elena Doshlygina, the Russian professor; and Lars Engle, my adviser, who encouraged me to translate, as well. Yevtushenko was a major influence because he was a living link to the literary world I hoped to one day inhabit: cosmopolitan, polyglot, erudite, but also accessible to a large reading public.”