Sarah Ruden

Sarah Elizabeth Ruden is an American writer of poetry, essays, translations of Classic literature, and popularizations of Biblical philology, religious criticism and interpretation.^[1][2]

Sarah Ruden was born in Ohio in 1962 and raised in the United Methodist Church.^[3] She holds an M.A. from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars and a Ph.D. in Classical Philology from Harvard University.^[4]

In addition to her academic appointments, Ruden has worked as a medical editor, a contributor to American periodicals,^[5] and a stringer for the South African investigative magazine noseweek.^[6]

Ruden became an activist Quaker during her ten years spent in post-apartheid South Africa, where she was a tutor for the South African Education and Environment Project.^[7][8] Both before and after her return to the United States in 2005, Ruden has engaged in ecumenical outreach and published a number of articles and essays, in both liberal and conservative publications.^[9][10]

She was a lecturer in Classics at the University of Cape Town. In 2016, she was awarded a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant to complete her translation of The Confessions of Augustine (2017).^[11]

She is an advocate for the popularization of ancient texts.^[12]

Ruden has been a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania since 2018.^[13]

In 2010, Ruden was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to fund her translation of the Oresteia of Aeschylus.^[14] She won a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant to complete her translation of The Confessions of Augustine in 2016.^[15] Her translation of the Gospels was funded in part by a Robert B. Silvers Grant for Work in Progress in 2019.^[16]

Ruden has been a “convinced Friend,” or Quaker convert, since 1992. Her Quakerism informs her translation methodology.^[17][18][19]

• Other Places. William Waterman Publications. 1995. (Awarded the 1996 Central News Agency Literary Award)^[20]

• Petronius (2000). The Satyricon of Petronius: A New Translation with Topical Commentaries (trans.). Hackett. ISBN 9780872205109.^[21]
• Aristophanes (2003). Aristophanes: Lysistrata, Translated, with Notes and Topical Commentaries (trans.). Hackett.^[22]
• Homer (2005). The Homeric Hymns (trans.). Hackett.^[23]
• Virgil (2008). The Aeneid: Vergil (trans.). Yale Univ. Press.^[24][25] Revised and expanded (Yale Univ. Press, 2021).
• Apuleius (2012). The Golden Ass (trans.). Yale Univ. Press.^[26]
• Aeschylus (2016). The Oresteia, in The Greek Plays (ed. Mary Lefkowitz and James Romm). Modern Library.
• Augustine (2017). Confessions (trans.). Modern Library.^[27]
• Plato (2015). Hippias Minor or The Art of Cunning: A new translation of Plato’s most controversial dialogue (trans.). With introduction and artwork by Paul Chan; essay by Richard Fletcher. Badlands Unlimited and the DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art.^[28]
• Anonymous (2021). The Gospels (trans.) Modern Library.^[29]

• Paul Among the People: The Apostle Reinterpreted and Reimagined in His Own Time. Image. 2011.^[30]
• The Face of Water: A Translator on Beauty and Meaning in the Bible. Pantheon. 2017.^[31]