Jenny McPhee

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Jenny McPhee is the author of The Center of Things, No Ordinary Matter, and A Man of No Moon. She is co-author of Girls: Ordinary Girls and Their Extraordinary Pursuits. Her translations from the Italian include works by the authors Anna Banti, Massimo Bontempelli, Cristina Campo, Fausta Cialente, Beppe Fenoglio, Natalia Ginzburg, Giacomo Leopardi, Primo Levi, Elsa Morante, Anna Maria Ortese, Curzio Malaparte, Paolo Maurensig, and Pope John Paul II. For her translation from the Italian of Lies and Sorcery by Elsa Morante, McPhee received both the 2024 Italian Prose in Translation Award and the John Florio Prize. Her writing has been published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Bookforum, The Washington Post, Harper’s Bazaar, Glimmer Train, and Zoetrope among others. McPhee was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 2020 and an Arts and Letters Award from The American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2025.

McPhee is a co-founder and board member of the Bronx Academy of Letters, a New York City public high school and middle school. She teaches in the Master’s in Translation program at New York University (NYU).

McPhee shortlisted for Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize for Literary Translation for her translation from the Italian of Lies and Sorcery by Elsa Morante | St Anne’s College, University of Oxford, May 2024

McPhee wins the 2024 Italian Prose in Translation Award for her translation from the Italian of Lies and Sorcery by Elsa Morante | American Literary Translators Association, Oct. 26, 2024

McPhee receives the biennial John Florio Prize (2024) for her translation from the Italian of Lies and Sorcery by Elsa Morante

McPhee receives a 2025 Arts and Letters Award from The American Academy of Arts and Letters | March 6, 2025