Carol Volk's career has followed an unconventional path.
What began with the study of French grew into a career that has spanned literary translation, diplomacy, and now memoir.
Carol has translated more than thirty books by leading French and francophone writers, including Tahar Ben Jelloun, Jean Dubuffet, Éric Rohmer, Amélie Nothomb, Patrick Chamoiseau, Luc Ferry, Olivier Roy, and Robert Bober. Her work has been published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Henry Holt, Columbia University Press, Harvard University Press, the University of Chicago Press, MIT Press, and other leading trade and university publishers, and reviewed in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and many other publications.
From 1999 to 2025, Carol served as a career member of the U.S. Foreign Service. An economics major by training, she specialized in political and economic affairs, serving in Tel Aviv, Rome, Baghdad, Rabat, and Washington. Her work ranged from human rights and refugee policy to infrastructure investment, commercial diplomacy, and strategic competition.
Among her assignments, she reported on human rights during the Second Intifada; helped establish the World Bank's Global Concessional Finance Facility; led the State Department's first Infrastructure Development Unit and advanced the Blue Dot Network; and concluded her diplomatic career as Economic Counselor in Morocco, where she expanded U.S. commercial engagement and organized the first U.S.–Morocco Venture Capital Forum.
She received numerous Superior and Meritorious Honor Awards from the U.S. Department of State, as well as the American Foreign Service Association's Averell Harriman Award for Constructive Dissent.
Carol holds degrees from Georgetown University, New York University, the Sorbonne, and the University at Albany. She speaks French and Italian fluently and has working knowledge of Hebrew and Arabic.
She is currently completing Crossing the Queensboro Bridge. After years overseas and in Washington, she and her husband now live in New York's Hudson Valley.
