Laura Esther Wolfson
Meet Laura
Laura Esther Wolfson is the author of For Single Mothers Working as Train Conductors (Iowa University Press), winner of the Iowa Prize for Literary Nonfiction, and Just Writing This Is Killing Me, forthcoming from Regal House in 2027. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times “Modern Love” column and The Best American Essays, and have been translated into multiple languages. She is a MacDowell Fellow and lives in New York City.
Before turning to writing, Wolfson had a long career as a diplomatic interpreter and translator working from Russian and French into English. She served for many years as the interpreter for Russian-speaking authors at the PEN World Voices Festival and as a PEN prison writing mentor. She also translated Stalin’s Secret Pogrom (Yale University Press), an award-winning history of the events leading up to the Night of the Murdered Poets. She is also a climate justice activist and immigrant advocate and works with formerly incarcerated people.