Gad Kaynar-Kissinger

Gad Kaynar-Kissinger was born in Tel Aviv (1947) and lives there. He is a retired Associate Professor from the Theater Department at Tel Aviv University, the former Chairman of the Israeli Writers Union and a member of the Israeli Writers Association. Kaynar-Kissinger is a stage, TV and film actor, a director, a former dramaturg of Israel’s National Theater “Habima”, The Cameri Theater of Tel Aviv, The Khan Theatre of Jerusalem, and a co-editor of TEATRON, Israel’s major theatre magazine. He is a translator of 70 plays from English, German, Norwegian and Swedish into Hebrew. For his Ibsen translations he was appointed in 2009 “Knight First Class of the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit.” Kaynar-Kissinger’s poems have been published widely since the late 1970s in major Israeli literary periodicals and supplements, and compiled in 8 volumes in Hebrew (the last ones being: In the Heavenly Baby-Blue Nursery, 2015; Selfie 2018; High Risk 2020, The Dove Aches for the Flood, 2024). Kaynar-Kissinger’s oeuvre also includes a poetry collection in English -- Rescue Mission (Houston, TX: Atmosphere Press, 2021), in German – Höchste Gefahr (Berlin: PalmArtPress, 2024), and the bi-lingual Hebrew-Spanish publication Lo que queda (What Remains, published by Verbum Madrid & Safra Tel Aviv, 2015). For ADHD he won "The General Israeli Writers' Union" Award (2010). Kaynar-Kissnger's poems have been translated and published in Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Arabic and German. His English translations were published (inter alia) by: Pidgeonholes, Allpoetry, Anomaly Literary Journal, Atlas & Alice, The Bitter Oleander, Lady Blue Literary Arts Journal, Bombay Review, Reality Break Press, LOULIT, Indolent Books, and others. Gad Kaynar-Kissinger is married to the actress and speech coach Ahuva Kaynar, and has three children and eight grandchildren.