Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
Levitan, Seymour
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
1936-
History
Seymour Levitan was born in Philadelphia in 1936. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1961 but missed the Vietnam war. He received his B.A. and M.A. in English Literature from the University of Pennsylvania, and went on to join the Department of English at UBC, where he taught from 1966 to 1972. In addition to his work teaching English, Levitan also became well-known as a translator and editor of Yiddish poems and stories. Paper Roses, his selection and translation of Rachel Korn’s poetry, was the 1988 winner of the Robert Payne Award of the Translation Center at Columbia University. He also helped organize the Jewish Film Festival and the Chelm Film Series.