Jessica Cohen

Jessica Cohen is an independent translator born in England, raised in Israel, and currently living in Denver. She translates contemporary Hebrew prose and other creative work. In 2017, she shared the Man Booker International Prize with David Grossman, for her translation of A Horse Walks Into a Bar, and her translation of Grossman’s To The End of the Land won the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize and the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction. She has also translated works by major Israeli writers including Amos Oz, Etgar Keret, Ronit Matalon, Nir Baram, Tom Segev, Yael Hedaya and Amir Gutfreund, and collaborated with filmmaker Ari Folman. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for her forthcoming translation of Rose of Lebanon by Leah Aini, a critically-acclaimed novel which her Guggenheim Fellowship will allow her to complete. In addition to translating, she mentors emerging translators and works with both the Authors Guild and the American Literary Translators Association (of which she is a past board member) to advocate for literary translators’ recognition, rights and working conditions.

Photo Credit: Tamara Mahoney-Kneisel