Jake Goldwasser

In Spring 2022, Jake Goldwasser was appointed the first Virtual Writer in Residence at Chetham’s Library by Manchester Literature Festival and Manchester UNESCO City of Literature for the second Festival of Libraries. As part of his residency, he was commissioned to create a new series of poems inspired by his research, reading and conversations with colleagues in Manchester. You can download a free PDF of Jake's commissioned poems, Luddite.

Jake Goldwasser is a poet, translator and cartoonist based in Iowa, City of Literature. His writing has appeared in The New England Review, Lit Hub, Grist, and elsewhere. His mission is to make more people love poetry, and he gets to work towards that mission every day as a teacher of literature at the University of Iowa. He is interested in exploring how the wisdom of the past is relevant to issues of the present, like technology, climate change, and globalisation. The practice of translation is central to that interest and to his writing. Jake translates from Dutch, and his translation of Judith Herzberg’s Landscape was published by Circumference Books (2022). When he's not writing or reading, Jake is a cartoonist for The New Yorker and other publications.

Partner Organisations