Jonas Zdanys was born in New Britain, Connecticut, a few months after his parents arrived in the United States after living for more than four years in a post-war United Nations’ camp for Lithuanian refugees. He learned English when he started school, graduated from Yale, and earned a Ph.D. in English from the State University of New York, where he studied with John Logan, Robert Creeley, and other writers. His doctoral dissertation focused on the affective dimensions and ethical foundations of literary expression.
Zdanys is a bilingual poet and translator and the author of forty books, thirty-seven of them collections of poetry, written in English and in Lithuanian, and of translations from the Lithuanian. His work has also appeared in many magazines and journals, among them American Poetry Review, Connecticut Review, Crosscurrents, Field, Poem, Poetry, Sewanee Review, The Vilnius Review, Yale Literary Magazine, and The Yale Review. He has received a number of prizes, book awards, writing and travel grants, and public recognitions for his own poetry and for his translations, including Lithuania’s Jotvingiai Prize, a major Lithuanian prize for poetry awarded by the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture. He was honored with an exhibition about his life and literary work by the National Library of Lithuania: http://www.lnb.lt/parodos/2. He was also awarded the Lithuanian Writers Union Prize for Translation in 1996 for his book Four Poets of Lithuania; the Lithuanian Writers’ Society Prize for Best Book of the Year in 1994 for Aušros Daina (Aurora’s Song), a volume of his poetry in Lithuanian; and the Phillips Poetry Award and the Weinstein Memorial Creative Writing Award for his English-language poems. He was selected as a Finalist for the Ohio State University Press/The Journal Award in Poetry for Water Light, a volume of his selected poems. Most recently, he was named Phi Beta Kappa Poet at Connecticut College and was selected for the 2012 Poet’s Voice series.
Zdanys has received various grants in support of his literary work, among them awards from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, the International Research and Exchanges Board with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Council on Russian and East European Studies of the Yale Center for International and Area Studies, Lietuviškos Knygos/Books From Lithuania, and the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture.
Zdanys is active as an editor and a literary panelist and has served as a reviewer for Wesleyan University Press, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, and World Literature Today. He has taught at the State University of New York and at Yale University, where he held a number of administrative positions and was a Scholar-in-Residence in the Yale Center for Russian and East European Studies; served for more than a decade as the state of Connecticut’s Chief Academic Officer, where he was responsible for the academic quality of Connecticut’s public and private colleges and universities; and currently serves as Professor of English at Sacred Heart University, where he teaches creative writing.
Poetry
The Kingfisher’s Reign. (Chicago: Virtual Artists Collective, 2012).
The Thin Light of Winter. New and Selected Poems. (Chicago: Virtual Artists Collective, 2009).
Tarpdury. (Vilnius: Lietuvos Rašytojų Sajungos Leidykla, 2008).
Salt. (Chicago: Virtual Artists Collective, 2007)
The Woman on the Bridge. (Chicago: Virtual Artists Collective, 2005)
The White City. (New Haven: Branford College Press and Jonathan Edwards College Press of Yale University, 2004). Illustrated and hand-printed by Kristina Zdanys.
White. (New Haven: The White Birch Press, 2004)
Dūmų stulpai. (Vilnius: Lietuvos Rašytojų Sajungos Leidykla, 2002).
Lithuanian Crossing. (New Haven: The White Birch Press, 1999).
Dotnuvos stoty. (Vilnius: Vaga Publishers Ltd, 1999)
Water Light. (Vilnius: Vaga Publishers Ltd, 1997).
Priam’s Daughter. Illustrated by Janice Murray. (Oxford, Mississippi: The Blue Newt Press, 1997).
The White Bend of the River. (New Haven: Patrick Schrieber, 1994).
The Metaphysics of Wolves. (New Haven: The White Birch Press, 1994).
Aušros Daina. (Kaunas: Spindulys/Santara, 1993).
Maine Aubade. (Newington, Connecticut: Appletree Chapbooks, 1990).
Voice on an Anthill. (New York: Manyland Books, 1982).
Translations
Agnė Žagrakalytė: Artistic Cloning. (Chicago: Virtual Artists Collective, 2010).
Kornelijus Platelis: Haiku. (New Haven: Pierson College Press of Yale University, 2007). Illustrated and hand-printed by Joanna Zdanys.
Icchokas Meras: Stalemate. Revised edition. (New York: Other Press, 2005)
Emptiness: Poems by Vytautas P. Bložė. (Vilnius: Vario Burnos, 2005)
Zones: Poems by Kornelijus Platelis. (Chicago: Virtual Artists Collective, 2004)
Five Lithuanian Women Poets. (Vilnius: Vaga Publishers Ltd, 2002)
Inclusions in Time: Selected Poems by Antanas A. Jonynas. (Vilnius: Lietuvos Rašytojų Sajungos Leidykla, 2002)
Silk: Poems by Nijole Miliauskaite. (Vilnius: Vario Burnos, 2002)
@ and Other Poems by Kornelijus Platelis. (Vilnius: Vario Burnos, 2002).
Snare for the Wind: Selected Poems of Kornelijus Platelis. (Vilnius: Vaga Publishers Ltd, 1999).
The Theology of Rain: Selected Poems of Alfonsas Nyka-Niliūnas. (Vilnius: Vaga Publishers Ltd and Lithuanian PEN, 1999)
Smoke From Nothing: Poems by Vytautas P. Bložė. (Philadelphia: The Pine Press, 1998).
Four Poets of Lithuania: Vytautas P. Bložė, Sigitas Geda, Nijolė Miliauskaitė, Kornelijus Platelis. (Vilnius: Vaga Publishers Ltd, 1995).
Chimeras in the Tower: Selected Poems of Henrikas Radauskas. (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1986). Recorded, Talking Books for the Blind 1988.
Leonardas Andriekus: Eternal Dream. (New York: Franciscan Fathers Press and Manyland Books, 1980).
Icchokas Meras: Stalemate. (New York: Lyle Stuart; Toronto: General Publishing Co.; Tel Aviv: Michaelmark Books, 1980).
Sigitas Geda: Songs of Autumn. (Pittsburgh: The Slow Loris Press, 1979).
Selected Post-war Lithuanian Poetry. (New York: Manyland Books, 1979).
Bronė Martin: Reality and Dream & The Wandering Seagull. (New York: Expedition Press, 1979).
Jurgis Gliauda: Agony. (New York: Manyland Books, 1977).
Other Books
Yale 1972: Twenty-five Years Out. Editor. (New Haven: Yale University, 1997).
Yale 1972: Twenty-Five Years Out, A Supplement . Editor. New Haven: Yale University, 1997).
True Fellowship in All Its Glory: Remembrances of C.S.P. Editor. (New Haven: Kingsley Trust Association,1992).
Poetry and Translations On-Line
www.efn.org/~valdas/poezija.html
Reading at the University of Vilnius
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIZ4Qg-0YM8
Articles and Papers
Zdanys is the author of some forty articles and papers, mostly on various topics on Lithuanian literature and translation theory.
Translation Theorist
Zdanys’ work as a translation theorist has been written about in various articles and essays, including the following:
http://iowareview.uiowa.edu/?q=page/towards_a_translation_culture&page=0,7 see pp. 5, 6, 8, and 9
Edwin Gentzler. Contemporary Translation Theories. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters, Ltd. Second Revised Edition, 2001. pp. 3, 7-9.
Recent and Forthcoming Publications
The Invention of Zero. Broadside. Boston: Timberline Press, 2012.
New Poems in Connecticut Review, Cybersoleil, and Freshwater.
Translations of Poems by Justinas Marcinkevičius in The Baltic Review (Vilnius 2011)
Translations of poems by Antanas Šimkus, Dainius Dirgėla, Ilzė Butkutė, Vainius Bakas, Gytis Norvila, Elena Karnauskaitė, and Kornelijus Platelis in Druskininkai Poetic Fall (Vilnius: Vaga, 2011).
Poems – Bones, Salt, The Woman on the Bridge, The Nightingale’s Song, The Fifth Wind, Freight Trains, Lithuanian Crossing, and The Angels of Wine – in A Baltic Anthology: Contemporary Lithuanian Poetry. Ed. Inara Cedrins (New Orleans: University of New Orleans Press, 2013)
Translations of poems by Vytautas P. Bložė , Antanas A. Jonynas, Agnė Žagrakalytė, Aidas Marčėnas, Daiva Čepauskaitė, Kornelijus Platelis, Erika Drungytė, Danutė Paulauskaitė, Donatas Petrošius, and Kęstutis Navakas in A Baltic Anthology: Contemporary Lithuanian Poetry. Ed. Inara Cedrins (New Orleans: University of New Orleans Press, 2013)
Translations of poems by Kęstutis Navakas – including musical settings – for a film project produced by Idée Fixe in Vilnius.
Sacred Heart University, Creative Writing Courses, Spring 2012
English 355 Poetry Writing
English 359 Very Short Narrative Forms: Flash Fiction, Prose Poetry, Postcard Stories, Micros, Short Shorts, and Other Kinds of Small Writing
