This blog is our joint effort to highlight writing by those from the former Soviet Union now living in various diasporas and by those who live in the post-Soviet space. As Russian-Jewish immigrants to the U.S., we are invested in cultural, linguistic, and geographical hybridity. “Punctured Lines” describes our hope to complicate essentialist views of identity and to read across borders. Our outlook is feminist, and we particularly want to amplify traditionally under-represented voices.
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Founding editors:
Yelena Furman was born in what is now Kyiv, Ukraine. She holds a BA in feminist studies and English from Stanford and a doctorate in Slavic languages and literatures from the University of California, Los Angeles, where she teaches Russian literature. She lives in Los Angeles. Her first work of fiction appears in Narrative Magazine.
Olga Zilberbourg was born in Leningrad, USSR and grew up in St. Petersburg, Russia before coming to the United States to study international business at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She later received an MA in Comparative Literature at San Francisco State University and turned to writing fiction in Russian and English. Her English-language debut LIKE WATER AND OTHER STORIES was published by WTAW Press.
Our Publications and Work We Love
Our Books:
Yelena Furman, “Rewriting Gender: Russian-American Women Writers and the Challenge to Russian Femininity,” in Global Russian Cultures, edited by Kevin M. F. Platt (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019)
Olga Zilberbourg, LIKE WATER AND OTHER STORIES (WTAW Press, 2019)
Work We Love:
Narine Abgaryan, Three Apples Fell from the Sky, translated by Lisa C. Hayden (Oneworld Publications 2020)
Margarita Khemlin, Klotsvog, translated by Lisa C. Hayden (Russian Library, Columbia UP, 2019)
Sana Krasikov, The Patriots (Spiegel & Grau, 2017)
Ellen Litman, The Last Chicken in America: A Novel in Stories (W. W. Norton, 2008); Mannequin Girl (W. W. Norton, 2014)
Olga Livshin, A Life Replaced: Poems with Translations from Anna Akhmatova and Vladimir Gandelsman (Poets and Traitors, 2019)
Irina Reyn, What Happened to Anna K. (Touchstone, Simon and Schuster, 2009); Mother Country (Thomas Dunne Books, 2019)
Anna Starobinets, Look at Him, translated by Katherine E. Young (Slavica, 2020)
Anya Ulinich, Petropolis (Penguin Random House, 2008)
Lara Vapnyar, There Are Jews in My House ( Penguin Random House, 2004); Memoirs of a Muse (Vintage Books, 2006); Divide Me by Zero (Tin House Books, 2020)
Guzel Yakhina, Zuleikha, translated by Lisa C. Hayden (Oneworld Publications 2020)
Lida Yusupova, The Scar We Know, translated by a collective of poets and edited by Ainsley Morse (Cicada Press, 2020)
Clarice Lispector, Audre Lorde, Gina Berriault, Grace Paley
Punctured Lines 