Here is the recording from the Soviet Diaspora Poetry by the Cheburashka Collective presented virtually on April 1. Now available for widespread sharing!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B35mNkknlM
The Participants:
Born in the Soviet Union, MARINA BLISHTEYN and her family fled to the US in 1991 as refugees. She is the author of Two Hunters, her first full-length collection, published by Argos Books in 2019 with a CLMP Face-Out grant. Prior chapbooks include Russian for Lovers (Argos Books), $kill$ (dancing girl press), Nothing Personal (Bone Bouquet Books), and most recently Sheet Music with Buffalo's own Sunnyoutside Press. Her work has been anthologized in the new Brooklyn Poets Anthology, The &Now Awards 3: The Best Innovative Writing, Why I Am Not a Painter, My Next Heart: New Buffalo Poetry, Through Clenched Teeth, and Far Villages, forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press. Recent work can be found in Hyperallergic, Peach Mag, No, Dear Magazine, and Sixth Finch. She teaches Composition and Rhetoric and experimental nonfiction, and occasionally runs The Loose Literary Canons, a feminist reading group in NYC.
To buy Two Hunters visit http://argosbooks.org/?p=2961
JULIA KOLCHINSKY DASBACH (www.juliakolchinskydasbach.com) emigrated from Ukraine as a Jewish refugee when she was six years old. She is the author of three poetry collections: The Many Names for Mother, winner the Wick Poetry Prize (Kent State University Press, 2019); Don't Touch the Bones (Lost Horse Press, 2020), winner of the 2019 Idaho Poetry Prize; and 40 WEEKS, forthcoming from YesYes Books in 2022. Her recent poems appear in POETRY, American Poetry Review , and The Nation, among others. Julia is the editor of Construction Magazine. She holds an MFA from the University of Oregon and is completing her Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania. She lives in Philly with her two kids, two cats, one dog, and one husband.
To buy The Many Names for Mother, visit http://www.kentstateuniversitypress.com/2019/the-many-names-for-mother/
To buy Don't Touch the Bones http://www.losthorsepress.org/catalog/dont-touch-the-bones-julia-kolchinsky-dasbach/
or order signed copies from Julia by emailing jkolch@gmail.com and paying via Venmo or Paypal
OLGA LIVSHIN is an English-language poet, essayist, and literary translator. Raised in Odessa and in Moscow, she came to the United States as a teenager with her family. She is the author of a hybrid collection "A Life Replaced: Poems with Translations from Anna Akhmatova and Vladimir Gandelsman” (Poets & Traitors Press, 2019). Her work is published in the Kenyon Review, Poetry International, Borderlands, Gyroscope, and elsewhere. She is an editorial and communication consultant in the Philly area. olgalivshin.com, @olgalivshin.
To buy A Life Replaced , visit https://www.amazon.com/Life-Replaced-Translations-Akhmatova-Gandelsman/dp/0999073737 or order signed copies directly from Olga by emailing olga.livshin@gmail.com and paying via Venmo or Paypal
RUTH MADIEVSKY is the author of a poetry collection, "Emergency Brake" (Tavern Books, 2016), winner of the Wrolstad Contemporary Poetry Series. Her work appears in Ploughshares, Tin House, The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Guernica, and elsewhere. When she is not writing, she works as an HIV and oncology pharmacist in Boston.
To buy Emergency Brake, visit https://www.spdbooks.org/Products/Default.aspx?bookid=9781935635536
GALA MUKOMOLOVA earned an MFA from the University of Michigan. She is the author of WITHOUT PROTECTION (Coffee House Press, 2019) and the chapbook One Above One Below: Positions & Lamentations (YesYes Books 2018). Her poetry and essays have appeared in POETRY, PEN America, the Billfold, and elsewhere. In 2016 Gala won the Discovery Poetry Prize. She writes astrology-inspired love letters under the name Galactic Rabbit.
To buy Without Protection, visit https://coffeehousepress.org/products/without-protection
LUISA MURADYAN is originally from the Ukraine and holds a Ph.D. in Poetry from the University of Houston where she was the recipient of an Inprint Jesse H. and Mary Gibbs Jones Fellowship and a College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Dissertation Fellowship. She is the author of American Radiance (University of Nebraska Press) and was the Editor-in-Chief of Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts from 2016-2018. She was also the recipient of the 2017 Prairie Schooner Book Prize and the 2016 Donald Barthelme Prize in Poetry. Additionally, Muradyan is a member of the Cheburashka Collective, a group of women and non binary writers from the former Soviet Union. Previous poems have appeared in Poetry International, the Los Angeles Review, West Branch, Blackbird, and Ninth Letter among others. You can also find her on Twitter at @LuisaMuradyan.
To buy American Radiance, visit https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/university-of-nebraska-press/9781496207753/ or order signed copies directly from Luisa by emailing lmuradyan32@gmail.com and paying via Venmo or Paypal
ALINA PLESKOVA is a poet, editor, and Russian immigrant turned proud Philadelphian. Her work has been featured in American Poetry Review, Thrush, Entropy , Cosmonauts Avenue, Peach Mag , Meduza, and more. She is co-editor of bedfellows magazine and her chapbook, What Urge Will Save Us, was published by Spooky Girlfriend Press in 2017. Find her at @nahhhlina on Twitter or alinapleskova.com.
NATALIA SMIRNOV is a human, writer, scholar, educator and media and experience maker. Born and raised in Russia and molded in the suburbs of New Jersey, art colonies of Philadelphia, and lakeside lairs of Chicago, Natalia carries the grit and glory of each of her homes as part of her deeply nomadic identity. Natalia earned her PhD in Learning Sciences from Northwestern University. Her dissertation is an ethnographic study of two technology-mediated civic learning contexts. Natalia holds a B.A. in American Culture & Media Arts and a graduate certificate in Diversity Leadership (with training in Transformational Social Therapy) from Temple University. She has taught video production, civic journalism, media literacy, web development, human-centered design and multidisciplinary art-making in Philadelphia and Chicago. In addition to research and teaching, Natalia designs and facilitates immersive game experiences to engage participants in critically examining issues of social inequality and cultural difference; organizes nurturing gatherings and writing retreats; and collaborates with educators and organizations to help them analyze and improve their pedagogy and assessment practices.