Jana Prikryl

Jana Prikryl, born in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia in 1975, is a poet, critic and editor. In 2020, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Early life and education

Jana Prikryl was born in Ostrava, now in the Czech Republic. The family settled in Hamilton, Ontario, where Prikryl attended Ancaster High School.

Prikryl learned Czech, then German, with English as her third language after her family moved to Canada. She now considers English to be her first language, and still speaks Czech.

Career

Following graduation, Prikryl worked at The New York Review of Books, initially as an intern. and in February 2021, she was named executive editor.

As an essayist, her writings on photography and film have been published in the Nation and the New York Review.

Her poetry and criticism has been published in the New Yorker, the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books, the Paris Review, the Nation, and the Baffler, Reviewers considered her a "notably resourceful writer of autobiography", Themes include the Canadian landscape, "Ideas of in-betweenness", and was chosen as one of the best books of the year 2019 in the New Statesman.

Personal life

As of 2019, she lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., with her husband, performing artist, Colin Gee, and their son, Nicholas, born in 2016. Her mother, Marcela Prikryl, is a materials scientist, artist, and courtroom sketch artist for the Hamilton Spectator. Prikryl's older brother died in an automobile accident in 1995 at the age of 27, and her first book, The After Party is dedicated to him. and a Creative Writing Grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.