Judith Kroll
Poet and essayist Judith Kroll is a seminal Sylvia Plath scholar and noted translator. Kroll earned a BA at Smith College and a PhD at Yale University.
Spare and intimate, Kroll’s lyrical poems explore themes of loss and attachment. Her poetry collections include Our Elephant & That Child (1991) and In the Temperate Zone (1974). Her poetry has been anthologized in The Weight of Addition: Texas Poetry Anthology (2007), A Contemporary Reader for Creative Writing (1994), and Understanding Poetry (1976).
Her groundbreaking critical study Chapters in a Mythology: The Poetry of Sylvia Plath (1976, revised edition 2007), an adaptation of her PhD dissertation, was the first full-length book of scholarship on Plath’s work and is considered a classic of criticism. Keenly interested in Indian literature and culture, Kroll lived in India for a decade and translated, from Kannada, U.R. Anantha Murthy’s Bhava (1998).
Kroll has received an American Institute of Indian Studies Senior Fellowship in the Creative Arts, an Annie Dillard Award in Nonfiction from the Bellingham Review, and a Pushcart Prize nomination.
Kroll has taught at Vassar College and the University of Texas at Austin. She resides in Austin.
Spare and intimate, Kroll’s lyrical poems explore themes of loss and attachment. Her poetry collections include Our Elephant & That Child (1991) and In the Temperate Zone (1974). Her poetry has been anthologized in The Weight of Addition: Texas Poetry Anthology (2007), A Contemporary Reader for Creative Writing (1994), and Understanding Poetry (1976).
Her groundbreaking critical study Chapters in a Mythology: The Poetry of Sylvia Plath (1976, revised edition 2007), an adaptation of her PhD dissertation, was the first full-length book of scholarship on Plath’s work and is considered a classic of criticism. Keenly interested in Indian literature and culture, Kroll lived in India for a decade and translated, from Kannada, U.R. Anantha Murthy’s Bhava (1998).
Kroll has received an American Institute of Indian Studies Senior Fellowship in the Creative Arts, an Annie Dillard Award in Nonfiction from the Bellingham Review, and a Pushcart Prize nomination.
Kroll has taught at Vassar College and the University of Texas at Austin. She resides in Austin.