Larissa Kyzer is an Icelandic to English literary translator, writer, and editorial professional.
Currently based in Brooklyn, New York, she lived in Reykjavík for five years after receiving a Fulbright grant in 2012. She holds a BA in Comparative Literature, an MS in Library and Information Science, and an MA in Translation Studies, which she earned at the University of Iceland.
Her translations include children’s books and chapter books for young readers, short stories, poetry, essays, plays, nonfiction, and novels, most notably Kristín Eiríksdóttir’s Nordic Council Literature Prize-nominated A Fist or a Heart, which was named one of Library Journal’s 10 Best World Literature titles in 2019. Larissa was awarded the American-Scandinavian Foundation’s Nadia Christensen Translation Prize for her translation of this remarkable work.
Larissa was Princeton University’s Fall 2019 Translator in Residence and has since taught translation workshops to undergraduate and graduate students at Princeton and New York University. She’s a member of Ós, an Iceland-based international and literary collective, the American Literary Translators Association, and served as co-chair of PEN America’s Translation Committee from 2020 - 2022. In her spare time, Larissa runs Jill!, a virtual Women+ in Translation reading series that spotlights women, trans and/or nonbinary translators and authors.