Eva Hoffman grew up in Poland and emigrated to Canada in her teens. She went on to study in the United States and worked as senior editor and writer for The New York Times.

She is the author of Lost in Translation, Exit Into History, Shtetl, The Secret, and, most recently, After Such Knowledge: Memory, History and the Legacy of the Holocaust.

Hoffman has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Whiting Award. She has lectured widely in the United States and Europe and she holds a biannual appointment in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at MIT.