Life and Career
Zucker was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey. From ages 4 to 17, he lived in East Lansing, Michigan. He attended college at UMass Amherst, obtaining a Bachelor of Science in Zoology in 1986. In 1990, he received a master's in international affairs from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, with a certificate from the Institute on East Central Europe.
During his years in Prague (1990–95), he worked as editor-translator for the English-language section of the Czech News Agency, copy editor–translator for the English-language newspaper Prognosis, and freelance translator for a variety of Czech- and English-language cultural reviews and litmags, including Raut, Trafika, Yazzyk, and Zlatý řez.
From 1996 to 2000, he copyedited for Swing, Condé Nast Traveler, Interview (magazine), and Vanity Fair (magazine), as well as for Aperture publishing house and Bookforum.
From 2002 to 2004, Zucker taught Czech at the NYU School of Continuing and Professional Studies.
Though currently in remission, his blog StickFinger — in Czech StrčPrst, from the tongue-twister Strč prst skrz krk ("Stick finger through throat") — focused variously on humanitarian aid to Iraq in the early days of the war, U.S. foreign policy, Arab and Muslim civil rights within the U.S., literature, language, translation, and life and how to live it.
In 2010, Zucker won the National Translation Award for his translation of Petra Hůlová's début novel of 2002, All This Belongs to Me.
In 2011, he received a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts to support his translation of the 1931 Czech classic Marketa Lazarová (novel), by Vladislav Vančura.
Currently Zucker lives in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and is employed at the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation, a nonprofit for genocide prevention with offices in New York City and Oświęcim.
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