Cynthia Haven

Cynthia L. Haven is an American literary scholar, author, critic, Slavicist, and journalist.

Photo by Margo Davis

Education

While at the University of Michigan, she studied with Joseph Brodsky.

Publications

Her books include Evolution of Desire: A Life of René Girard, which the San Francisco Chronicle named one of the best books of 2018. The biography was also named a 2019 CHOICE Magazine Outstanding Academic Title. Her Czesław Miłosz: A California Life was a finalist for a Northern California Book Award. She is a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar.

Her Penguin Modern Classics anthology for the selected writings of René Girard was published in June 2023, and a short German anthology was published in 2022 with the Leipzig publisher Reclam, for its popular "Was bedeutet das alles?" series.

Recognition

She has been a Milena Jesenská Journalism Fellow with the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna and a visiting scholar at Stanford University's Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages while researching her book on French theorist René Girard. She was a Voegelin fellow at the Hoover Institution while working on her book on Nobel poet Joseph Brodsky and his translator, George L. Kline. She blogs at The Book Haven. She has written for a wide range of publications, including The Times Literary Supplement, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times Book Review.

Books

1. All Desire Is a Desire for Being: Essential Writings (London: Penguin Modern Classics, 2023; New York: Penguin Modern Classics, 2024).
2. Warum kämpfen wir? Und wie hören wir auf? (Leipzig: Reclam, 2022).
3. Czesław Miłosz: A California Life (Berkeley: Heyday, 2021).
4. The Man Who Brought Brodsky Into English: Conversations with George L. Kline (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2021).
5. Conversations with René Girard: Prophet of Envy (London: Bloomsbury, 2020).
6. Evolution of Desire: A Life of René Girard, (Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2018).
7. Everything Came to Me at Once: The Intellectual Vision of René Girard(Belmont, NC: Wiseblood, 2017).
8. An Invisible Rope: Portraits of Czesław Miłosz (Athens, Ohio: Swallow/Ohio University Press, 2011).
9. Czesław Miłosz: Conversations, (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, Literary Conversations Series, 2006).
10. Three Poets in Conversation (London: Waywiser, 2006).
11. Peter Dale in Conversation with Cynthia Haven (London: Waywiser, 2005).
12. Joseph Brodsky: Conversations (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, Literary Conversations Series, 2003).

Selected Interviews and Articles

1. "Love Triumphs over Violence—Eventually: Cynthia L. Haven on René Girard, Joy Davidman’s Curious Path to C.S. Lewis, Poets in Exile, More", Miller's Book Review, November 2, 2024.
2. "Cynthia Haven: From Envy to Forgiveness", Meditations with Zohar, Apple Podcasts, February 14, 2023.
3. "Cynthia L. Haven on René Girard, Czeslaw Milosz, and Joseph Brodsky," Conversations with Tyler Cowen, Aug. 24, 2022
4. "'Poetry Has to Defend Itself': A Conversation with Adam Zagajewski", Los Angeles Review of Books, April 6, 2021.
5. "Czesław Miłosz: A California Life," Robert Pogue Harrison's "Entitled Opinions," July 25, 2022.
6. "At the Mercy of My Passions and Opinions: A Conversation with William Kennedy", Los Angeles Review of Books, June 8, 2020
7. "Czesław Miłosz: A California Life — A Conversation with Cynthia L. Haven," The Athenaeum Review, Episode 45, 2019.
8. "Cynthia Haven: Interview with Scott Beauchamp, "Full Stop: Reviews, Interviews, Marginalia," May 15, 2019.
9. "René Girard and the Mysterious Nature of Desire", Johns Hopkins University The Hub, August 8, 2018.
10. "Ismail Kadare Grapples With the Supernatural", New York Times Book Review, February 23, 2018.
11. "Brodsky and His Muses", Hoover Digest, July 7, 2017.
12. "Mad Russia Hurt Me Into Poetry: An Interview with Maria Stepanova", Los Angeles Review of Books, June 15, 2017.
13. "Rediscovering Regina Derieva", Times Literary Supplement, October 11, 2014.
14. "An interview with Philip Roth: 'The novelist’s obsession is with language'”, The Book Haven, February 3, 2014.