Sean Cotter

Ph.D. - Comparative Literature
University of Michigan

M.A. - Humanities
University of Texas at Dallas

B.A. - English Literature
Loyola University, New Orleans

Cotter, Sean. "Modernism, Foreignization, and Form: translationmourning in Anne Carson's NOX." The Translator's Visibility: New Debates and Epistemologies. Ed. Larisa Cercel and Alice Leal. Routledge, 2025. 113 - 130. - ---

Cotter, Sean. "Chomsky versus Foucault, and the Problem of Knowledge in Translation." KNOW: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge. 7:2 (Fall 2023) 171 -183.  - ---

Cotter, Sean. “An Essay on Nichita Stănescu: The Classic and the Personal in Translation.” This Is a Classic. Ed. Regina Galasso. Bloomsbury, 2023. 179 – 192. - ---

Cotter, Sean and Esther Allen. “A Translation Experiment: Kleptomaniac Classic: Ramona.” This Is a Classic. Ed. Regina Galasso. Bloomsbury, 2023. 273 – 308. - ---

Cotter, Sean, trans. Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu. Dallas, TX: Deep Vellum Books, 2022.

• Winner:  Dublin Literary Award, Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, Romanian Cultural Institute Best Translation from Romanian in 2022, The New Yorker list of Best Books of 2022, Publisher’s Weekly list of Best Books of 2022, The Financial Times list of Best Books of 2022, The Washington Post list of Best Books from 2022, Words without Borders list of Best Books of 2022
• Long list: International Booker Prize 2025
• Reviewed: Astra Magazine, Asymptote, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Dissent, full stop, Kirkus Reviews (starred), Los Angeles Review of Books, n+1, The Nation, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Publisher’s Weekly (starred), Times Literary Supplement, The Washington Post

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Cotter, Sean, trans. Rakes of the Old Court by Mateiu Caragiale. Northestern UP, 2021.

• Winner:  Revista de cultură Familia Diploma of honor 
• Reviewed: Agathos, The Complete Review, Los Angeles Review of Books (two articles), Observator cultural, The Modern Novel, Times Literary Supplement 

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Cotter, Sean, trans. FEM by Magda Cârneci. Dallas, TX: Deep Vellum Books, 2021. 

• Finalist: PEN America Translation Prize
• Reviewed: American Book Review, Asymptote, BOMB, Calvert Journal, Chicago Review of Books, Ezra, Journal of Romanian Studies, Kenyon Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Modern Novel, Publisher’s Weekly, Travel through Stories, Words without Borders, World Literature Today

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Cotter, Sean, trans. Curl by T. O. Bobe. Boston, MA: Wakefield Press, 2019

• Finalist: Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry (2020)
• Reviewed: The Complete Review, Counterpunch

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Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs
The University of Texas at Dallas [2023–Present]

Professor of Literature and Translation Studies
The University of Texas at Dallas [2016–Present]

Language and Literature Program Coordinator
The University of Texas at Dallas [2016–2019]

Associate Professor of Literature and Translation Studies
The University of Texas at Dallas [2010–2016]

Assistant Professor of Literature and Translation Studies
The University of Texas at Dallas [2004–2006]

English as a Foreign Language Teacher and Peace Corps Volunteer
Ioan Cuza High School, Bucharest, Romania [1994–1996]

Spanish Teacher, 6 - 8th grade
Bailey Magnet School, Jackson MS [1993–1994]

Professional recognitions and honors (study, teaching, research, service)

• Texas Institute of Letters
• Dublin Literary Award, 2024, Dublin City Council
• Best Translation from Romanian Literature, 2023, Romanian Cultural Institute
• Translation Fellowship, 2021, National Endowment for the Arts
• Translator in Residence, 2019, Romanian Literature Museum, Iași, Romania
• Assessment Innovator, awarded to the Literature Subcommittee, 2018, Provost Office of Assessment, The University of Texas at Dallas
• Biennial Book Prize, 2014, Society for Romanian Studies
• Best Translated Book Award (Poetry), 2013, Three Percent
• PEN/Heim Translation Fund, 2013, PEN America
• Translation Fellowship, 2011, National Endowment for the Arts
• Extraordinary Contributions to the Promotion of Romanian Literature through Translation, 2009, Romanian Cultural Institute
• PEN Southwest Book Award for Translation, 2009, PEN USA
• President Mihai Cimpoi Award, 2003, Moldovan Writers Union
• Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Grant, 2001, United States Department of Education
• Horace H. Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship Predoctoral Fellowship, 2002 
• Harry C. Routledge Prize, 2001, Southern Comparative Literature Association

Professor Sean Cotter Receives National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellowship

Today, the National Endowment for the Arts announced that Sean Cotter will receive a Literature Translation Fellowship of $25,000 to translate Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu into English. Cotter is one of 24 Literature Translation Fellows selected for fiscal year 2021. In total, the Arts Endowment will award $325,000 in grants to support the translation of works written in 16 different languages into English.

“Supporting literary translation not only means that many of the world’s talented writers reach a new audience, but also new and different perspectives and experiences are made available to readers in this country,” said Amy Stolls, director of literary arts at the National Endowment for the Arts. “The Arts Endowment is proud to continue its long history of supporting the art of translation through these 24 fellowships.”

Mircea Cărtărescu (b. 1956) is a celebrity and arguably the most famous poet, essayist, and prose writer of his generation. This project will translate his monumental 847-page novel, which ranges in scope from dust mites to the cosmos. Originally published in 2015 and a bestseller in Romania, translations of Solenoid have won the Prix Transfuge in French and the Thomas Mann Preis in German. Partly autobiographical, the novel is a first-person account of a high school teacher with literary ambitions who experiences rejection after presenting at an important literary workshop, leading him on a diverging path from Cărtărescu’s actual life. Grounded in the realities of the late 1970s to ’80s Communist Romania, this novel is interspersed with elements of surrealism—the narrator’s house, for example, resembles a boat on the outside, but on the inside contains numberless rooms and an enormous solenoid that is a portal to other dimensions. Solenoid has never been translated into English.

Sean Cotter is a translator and professor of literature and translation at the University of Texas at Dallas. A previous National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellow, Cotter is the translator of 11 books, including T.O. Bobe’s Curl and Nichita Stănescu’s Wheel with a Single Spoke and Other Poems, which was awarded the Best Translated Book Award for Poetry.

Professor Wins Prize for Translations of Romanian Poet

Dr. Sean Cotter, associate professor of literature and translation studies, has won the 2013 Best Translated Book Award in poetry given by Three Percent, the international literature magazine of the University of Rochester. Cotter’s winning book, Wheel With a Single Spoke and Other Poems, crosses the language barriers of Eastern Europe and brings the works of one of Romania’s most influential poets, Nichita Stanescu, to English for the first time. “I am very pleased to receive the award and thrilled that people are reading Stanescu,” said Cotter. “In an era of intense cultural politics, his aesthetics made him a leader of his generation, and his poetry was widely read.” Stanescu was the defining poet of Communist-era Romania. Cotter calls Stanescu’s work “innovative, conceptual and challenging poetry charged with energy.”

Romanian Literature Translator Wins NEA Grant

A National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grant will support a UT Dallas professor’s quest to make the work of an acclaimed Romanian poet available to readers in English. Dr. Sean Cotter, associate professor of translation studies, international modernist literature and Romanian literature, was among the 20 recipients of a 2011 Literature Fellowship for Translation Projects from the NEA. The $12,500 grant will support the translation from the Romanian of Belgrade in Five Friends and Other Poems by Nichita Stanescu. Stanescu is a major figure in Romanian postwar poetry, credited with bringing modernism into the Communist era, but remains largely un-translated into English.