When: Monday, October 15, 2012 at 7pm
Where: New York Public Library, Mid-Manhattan Branch, The Corner Room, 40th St. & 5th Avenue, (diagonally across from the main building) NYC
Cost: Free
Description: Carrying forward Russia’s rich poetic
tradition, acclaimed rising poets read from their work, discuss the
variety and richness of contemporary Russian verse, and consider their
art and its role in the context of Russia’s volatile political and
social reality. Reading alongside them will be key US poets
whose work, in breadth of vision and acclaim, both relates to and
differs from that of the Russian poets in interesting ways. To be
moderated by David Lehman, one of the foremost editors, literary
critics, poets, and anthologists of contemporary American literature.
This event is for the general English-speaking public, readings will be
done in both English and Russian.
Featuring:
Tina Chang, born
in 1969 in Oklahoma, was raised in New York and teaches
poetry at Sarah Lawrence College. She was elected as Poet
Laureate of Brooklyn in 2010 and has received awards from Academy of
American Poets, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and Poets &
Writers.
Heather Christle was
born in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, in 1980. She is the author of three
poetry collections: What Is Amazing, The Difficult Farm, and The Trees
The Trees, which won the 2012 Believer Poetry Award. She teaches poetry
at Sarah Lawrence College, serves as Web Editor for jubilat, and
coordinates lectures for the Royal Society of Hadley for Improving
Natural Knowledge at Flying Object, in western Massachusetts, where she
lives.
Dina Gatina
was born in 1981 in the town of Engels in the Russian provinces. She
completed her degree at the Saratov Arts School and then graduated from
the Moscow Institute of Contemporary Art. She lives in St, Petersburg
and works as an artist, illustrator and poet. In 2001 she was
shortlisted for the Debut Prize with her poetry and in 2002 she won the
prize in the “short prose” category.
Alla Gorbunova
was born in 1985 on Vasilievsky Island in St. Petersburg; she graduated
from the Philosophy Department of St. Petersburg University in 2008,
majoring in social philosophy and the philosophy of history. Gorbunova
now works as a translator, reviewer, and journalist, and teaches
philosophy at the St. Petersburg Polytechnic University. She won the
Debut Prize for her poetry in 2005, and has since published two
collections of poetry, the latest of which was short-listed in 2011 for
the Andrei Belyi Prize.
Lev Oborin
is a highly influential young poet and critic. Born in 1987 in Moscow,
he graduated from the Russian State University for the Humanities with a
degree in philology. He is currently a graduate student there, studying
Russian-British cultural ties. He is one of the creators of a web site
dedicated to experimental poetry and a guitarist in an indie rock band.
Matthew Yeager's poems have appeared in NANOfiction, Sixthfinch, Bat
City Review, Supermachine, Gulf Coast, and others, as well as Best
American Poetry 2005 and Best American Poetry 2010. His short film "A Big Ball of Foil in a
Small NY Apartment" was an official selection at thirteen film festivals
in 2009-2010, picking up three awards.
Other distinctions include the 2009 Barthelme Prize in Short Prose and
two MacDowell fellowships. He’s been working the last two years on developing
and writing a serial television drama tentatively called Savages of the Ohio,
a true historical drama about Philadelphia merchant adventurers in the
1760s. His work is widely taught. The son of a coalminer’s daughter, he
graduated high school in Cincinnati, OH in 1998 and has lived in New York City
since 2002.
Moderator:
David Lehman
will moderate the evening. One of the foremost editors, literary
critics, and anthologists of contemporary American literature, David
Lehman is also one of its most accomplished poets. Born in New York City
in 1948, Lehman earned a PhD from Columbia University and attended the
University of Cambridge as a Kellett Fellow. He is the author of
numerous collections of poetry and creator of The Best American Poetry series in 1988 and the editor of The Oxford Book of American Poetry.
Lehman’s numerous honors and awards include fellowships from the
National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the
Ingram Merrill Foundation, and awards from the American Academy of Arts
and Letters and the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award. On
faculty at both the New School and New York University, he lives in New
York City.