Todd Hasak-Lowy

Todd Hasak-Lowy is an American novelist, essayist, non-fiction and short story writer. Currently, he is a professor of Creative Writing and Literature at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He was formerly an Associate Professor of Hebrew Language and Literature at the University of Florida before moving to Evanston, Illinois to focus on writing. His first book, The Task of this Translator (Harcourt Books), a short story collection, was published in 2005. His first novel, Captives, appeared in fall 2008. 33 Minutes, his first middle-grade novel, was published in 2013, and Me Being Me is Exactly as Insane as You Being You, his first young adult novel was published in 2015. His next work was a narrative memoir for readers aged 9–13, Somewhere There is Still a Sun, co-written with Holocaust survivor Michael Gruenbaum, and published in 2015. It tells the story of Michael’s life from 1939-1945 in Prague and, later, the Terezin Concentration Camp. Roses & Radicals: The Epic Story of How American Women Won the Right to Vote was published in 2018. Hasak-Lowy's latest work, published in 2020, is We Are Power: How Nonviolent Activism Changes the World.

Early life Hasak-Lowy was born in Detroit, Michigan and raised in its suburbs by his father, Ron Lowy, an architect, and his mother, Suzanne Levin. He was the eldest of three boys. Hasak-Lowy is Jewish.

Hasak-Lowy describes "the most important part" of his childhood as attending Habonim Camp Tavor in Three Rivers, Michigan, part of the Habonim-Dror youth movement. After graduating from high school, he spent a year in Israel living on a kibbutz working on irrigation. Hasak-Lowy published his first novel, Captives, in 2008, and a book-length academic study, Here and Now: History, Nationalism, and Realism in Hebrew Fiction.

Relocation to Chicago and writing for younger readers Hasak-Lowy describes a growing tension between his academic work and creative writing, which—along with other reasons—resulted in his family relocating to Evanston, Illinois in 2010.

Several of Hasak-Lowy's works have been translated into other languages.

Translation work In addition to his own creative writing, Hasak-Lowy began translating Hebrew literature into English in 2009. in 2013. Hasak-Lowy's subsequent translation work includes Dror Burstein 's Netanya, Dror Mishani's A Possibility of Violence, and Orly Castel-Bloom's An Egyptian Novel.

Creative inspiration Hasak-Lowy describes the creative spark that led him to write occurring early in graduate school, while studying narrative and reading a comic book in the spirit of R. Crumb or Harvey Pekar. He cites two novels, Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine and Yaakov Shabtai's Past Continuous, as the catalyst for the forming of his creative voice.