Embattled Homeland: Readings by Authors Born in Ukraine, Russia, and Moldova

Punctured Lines is happy to announce an in-person reading by seven women writers who emigrated from the former Soviet Union and now live in (or in one case, coming to visit) Los Angeles. This event follows the original Embattled Homeland reading during LitCrawl in San Francisco in 2022, with ex-Soviet immigrant writers living in the Bay Area. Like its San Francisco predecessor, the Los Angeles event is in support of Ukraine, which has been defending itself against Russia’s unprovoked attack for nearly a year. While the reading is free, we encourage people to donate to the vetted organizations below. Many thanks to Sasha Vasilyuk for organizing this event.

The reading will take place on Friday, January 20, 2023 at 7 pm at Stories Books & Cafe (1716 W. Sunset Blvd.). Please RSVP here.

Our performance is free, but please consider supporting these organizations:

• Ukraine Trust Chain supports volunteers in Ukraine
• Project Kesher provides emergency support for women and girls in Ukraine
• Writers and Newspapers in Odesa, organized by poet Ilya Kaminsky
• Memorial, international human rights organization

Please read more about the writers below:

Julia Alekseyeva was born in Kyiv in the former USSR and emigrated to Chicago in childhood. She is an assistant professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as a graphic artist specializing in non-fiction comics. Her first full-length graphic novel, a nonfiction historical memoir entitled Soviet Daughter: A Graphic Revolution, was published by Microcosm in January 2017 and won the VLA Diversity Award. She has published non-fiction graphic essays in The Nib, Jewish Currents, Paper Brigade, World Literature Today, and Lilith, and was one of the guest editors of the Soviet Issue of Jewish Currents in Winter-Spring 2022. www.jalekseyeva.com and @thesoviette on socials

Katya Apekina is a novelist, screenwriter and translator. Her novel, The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish, was named a Best Book of 2018 by Kirkus, Buzzfeed, and others, was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize and has been translated into Spanish, Catalan, French, German and Italian. She has published stories in various literary magazines and translated poetry and prose for Night Wraps the Sky: Writings by and about Mayakovsky (FSG, 2008), short-listed for the Best Translated Book Award. She has done residencies at VCCA, Playa, Ucross, Art Omi: Writing and Fondation Jan Michalski in Switzerland. Born in Moscow, she immigrated to the U.S. in 1986. www.apekina.com

Inna Effress is a speechwriter, fiction writer, and poet who emigrated from Ukraine to the United States as a child. Her work appears in numerous publications, including CutBank, Air/Light Magazine, Santa Monica Review, Swan River Press’s Uncertainties series, and Strange Tales at 30 (Tartarus Press). Inna writes for grassroots organizations and leaders in California that are working to bring equitable outcomes to their communities. www.innaeffress.com / @InnaEffress on Twitter

Yelena Furman was born in what was then Kiev, the Soviet Union and is now Kyiv, Ukraine. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches Russian literature at UCLA. Her fiction has appeared in Narrative and the Willesden Herald, book reviews in the Los Angeles Review of Books and The Baffler, and academic articles in various venues. She and Olga Zilberbourg co-run Punctured Lines, a feminist blog on post-Soviet and diaspora literatures. Twitter @YelenaFurman

Rimma Kranet is a Ukrainian American writer with a Bachelor’s Degree in English from University of California Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in Across The Margin, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Construction Lit, EcoTheo Collective, Fence, The Common Breath, Door Is A Jar Magazine, and others. Featured in The Short Vigorous Roots: A Contemporary Flash Fiction Collection of Migrant Voices and the IHRAF Ukrainian Voices Anthology. She resides between Florence, Italy and Los Angeles, California. Twitter @ RKranet

Ruth Madievsky is the author of a debut novel, All-Night Pharmacy (Catapult, 2023) and a poetry collection, “Emergency Brake” (Tavern Books, 2016). Her work appears in The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Times, Harper’s Bazaar, Tin House, and elsewhere. She is a founding member of the Cheburashka Collective, a community of women and nonbinary writers whose identity has been shaped by immigration from the Soviet Union to the United States. Originally from Moldova, she lives in Los Angeles, where she works as an HIV and primary care pharmacist. www.ruthmadievsky.com / @ruthmadievsky on socials.

Sasha Vasilyuk is a journalist and author of the novel Your Presence Is Mandatory, set between Hitler’s Germany and post-war Ukraine. It will be published in the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Finland and Brazil in 2024. Sasha’s writing has been published in The New York Times, TIME, NBC, Harper’s Bazaar, BBC Radio, USA Today, The Telegraph, Los Angeles Times, and Narrative. Sasha grew up between Crimea, Moscow, and San Francisco. She currently lives in San Francisco with her husband and children. www.sashavasilyuk.com / @sashavasilyuk on socials

Readings by Authors Born in Ukraine, Russia, and Moldova at San Francisco’s Lit Crawl

Update: there has been a venue change. This event is now happening at Stage Werx Theatre, 446 Valencia Street.

Punctured Lines is co-hosting a Lit Crawl reading by six Bay Area writers born in Ukraine, Russia, and Moldova. Shaken by the horrific tragedy of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we will read pieces exploring our connections, direct and indirect, to the part of the world we associate with home and exile, and where many of our friends and relatives are suffering as a result of the war. We work in the genres of nonfiction, literary and historical fiction, YA, flash, and other literary forms to tell our stories, and will read excerpts from our published and new work.

This event will take place at 5 pm on October 22nd at Blondie’s Bar Stage Werx Theatre, 446 Valencia Street in San Francisco .

Maggie Levantovskaya is a writer and lecturer in the English department at Santa Clara University. She was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, and grew up in San Francisco. She has a PhD in comparative literature from UC San Diego. Her creative nonfiction and journalism have appeared in The Rumpus, Michigan Quarterly Review, Catapult, The LA Times, Current Affairs, and Lithub. Twitter: @MLevantovskaya

Masha Rumer‘s nonfiction book about immigrant families, Parenting with an Accent, was published by Beacon Press in 2021, with a paperback coming out in October 2022. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, Parents, and more, winning awards from the New York Press Association. Twitter: @MashaDC

Originally from Kishinev, Moldova, Tatyana Sundeyeva is a Russian-American writer living in San Francisco. She writes short fiction, travel writing, and Young Adult novels and has been published in Oyster River Pages, Cleaver, and Hadassah Magazine. Twitter: @TeaOnSundey

Vlada Teper is a writer and educator from Moldova. Her essays have been featured in Newsweek and on NPR. A former Fulbright Scholar in Russia, Teper is the founder of Inspiring Multicultural Understanding (IMU) Peace Club. With MAs in English and Education from Stanford University, Vlada is the recipient of the 826 Valencia Teacher of the Month Award. Twitter: @VladaTeper

Sasha Vasilyuk is a journalist and author of forthcoming novel YOUR PRESENCE IS MANDATORY set between Ukraine and Nazi Germany (Bloomsbury, 2024). She has written about Eastern Europe for The New York Times, TIME, BBC, Harper’s Bazaar, NBC, USA Today, Narrative, and others. Twitter: @SashaVasilyuk

Olga Zilberbourg is the author of LIKE WATER AND OTHER STORIES (WTAW Press) and four Russian-language story collections. She has published fiction and essays in Electric Literature, Lit Hub, Narrative, Alaska Quarterly Review, Confrontation, Scoundrel Time, and elsewhere. She co-edits Punctured Lines, a feminist blog on post-Soviet and diaspora literatures, and co-hosts the San Francisco Writers Workshop. Twitter: @bowlga

Born in the USSR, Raised in Canada

We’re happy to share the recording from the event we hosted on May 15, 2022, gathering writers who were born in the former Soviet Union and immigrated to Canada as children. Currently located all across Canada, from Montreal (Luba Markovskaia) to Vancouver (Maria Reva) with a definite hub around Toronto (Julia Zarankin, Lea Zeltserman, Maria Lioutaia, Maria Bloshteyn), these generous writers shared excerpts from their work and answered questions about living with hyphenated identities and building writing communities. Russia’s war in Ukraine was at the forefront of this conversation, as most of the writers and the participants have family and friends affected by the bombs. This event was a fundraiser, and we encourage everyone to continue donating to the organizations listed below.

Please enjoy this recording and reach out to us with ideas for future projects!

Organizations to support:

Donate directly to Ukraine’s military: https://bank.gov.ua/en/news/all/natsionalniy-bank-vidkriv-spetsrahunok-dlya-zboru-koshtiv-na-potrebi-armiyi

UNHCR Ukraine Emergency Relief Fund: https://give.unhcr.ca/page/100190/donate/1

JIAS Ukraine Refugee Response: https://jiastoronto.org/ukraine-crisis-update/

ROLDA, helping stranded animals/pets: https://rolda.org/breaking-news-ukraine/

Ukraine Trust Chain, helping evacuate civilians out of war zones: https://www.ukrainetrustchain.org/

Questions?

Email: puncturedlines [at] gmail.com

Bios:

Maria Bloshteyn was born in Leningrad and emigrated to Toronto when she was nine. She received her PhD from Toronto’s York University and was a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University. Her main scholarly interests lie in the field of literary and cultural exchange between Russia and the United States, with a special focus on Dostoevsky’s impact on American literature and culture. She is the author of The Making of a Counter-Culture Icon: Henry Miller’s Dostoevsky (University of Toronto Press, 2007), the translator of Alexander Galich’s Dress Rehearsal: A Story in Four Acts and Five Chapters (Slavica, 2009) and Anton Chekhov’s The Prank (NYRB Classics, 2015), and the editor of Russia is Burning: Poems of the Great Patriotic War (Smokestack Books, 2020). Her articles appeared in a number of scholarly and not-so-scholarly journals and her translations have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry (Penguin Classics, 2015).

Maria Lioutaia was born in Moscow and now lives and writes in Toronto. Her fiction has recently appeared in Ploughshares, One Story, Gulf Coast, Tin House, Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, and Conjunctions. She was a Tin House scholar, a finalist for The Iowa Review Awards, and was on the longlist for the CBC Short Story Prize four times. She holds an MFA from NYU, where she was a Goldwater Fellow. Her last name means “fierce” in Russian. She’s currently at work on a novel.

Luba Markovskaia was born in Leningrad and lives in Montreal. She holds a PhD in French literature from McGill University and works as an independent literary and cultural translator. Her writing on language, identity, and immigration has appeared in publications such as Moebius, Spirale, and Nuit blanche, as well as in translation in Maisonneuve Magazine and Quebec Reads, and was shortlisted for the French CBC Nonfiction Prize. In 2021, she received the John Glassco Translation Prize for her translation of Elena Johnson’s Field Notes for the Alpine Tundra. She sits on the editorial board of Spirale magazine. You can visit her LTAC profile and connect with her on Twitter at @luba_mark.

Maria Reva writes fiction and opera libretti. She is the author of the linked story collection Good Citizens Need Not Fear (Doubleday, Virago, and Knopf Canada New Face of Fiction, 2020), which was inspired by her own family’s experiences in Ukraine. Maria’s stories have appeared in The Atlantic, McSweeney’s, Granta, The Journey Prize Stories, The Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. She won a National Magazine Award in 2019 and was a finalist for the Writers’ Trust of Canada 2020 Fiction Prize. Maria was born in Ukraine and grew up in New Westminster, British Columbia. She received her MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas.

Julia Zarankin is the author of FIELD NOTES FROM AN UNINTENTIONAL BIRDER. Her writing has appeared in Audubon, Canadian Geographic, ON Nature, The Walrus, The Globe and Mail, Birding Magazine, Hazlitt, Threepenny Review, and Orion Magazine. She was recently a finalist for the CBC Short Story prize (2020). When not hanging out with a spotting scope at sewage lagoons or working furiously at her desk, Julia lectures to lifelong learners in and around Toronto. Zarankin is currently at work on a novel that features, among other things, a Babushka Beauty Pageant.

Born in St. Petersburg back when it was Leningrad, Lea Zeltserman was raised in Edmonton and now calls Toronto home. She writes about Soviet-Jewish food, history, immigration, and culture. Her work has appeared in the Globe and Mail, Tablet, the Forward, Chatelaine, Today’s Parent, Walrus, and others. An essay on Soviet-Jewish food was included in the 100 Jewish Foods anthology from Tablet Magazine. She also publishes the Soviet-Samovar, a monthly round-up of FSU writing. Find her online at https://leazeltserman.com or on Twitter at https://twitter.com/zeltserman and Instagram: @leazelt.

Born in the USSR, Raised in Canada: A Reading in Support of Ukraine

Punctured Lines is delighted to bring you our next event–a reading and a Q&A with six established authors who were born in the former Soviet Union and immigrated to Canada as children. In their fiction and nonfiction they explore topics of multicultural identity, life under communism, Jewish culture, food, history, and making a home in a strange land.

Please register on Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/born-in-the-ussr-raised-in-canada-a-reading-in-support-of-ukraine-tickets-315030252967

We began planning this event before Russia’s renewed, full-scale attack on Ukraine, and we want to acknowledge that this war is resonating deeply throughout the diasporic community. We feel that it’s particularly important for us to come together at this time, to listen to each other’s stories and to amplify each other’s voices and resources in support of the people of Ukraine in their fight against the Russian totalitarian regime. We also want to extend our support to those citizens of the Russian Federation resisting and fleeing from this regime.

*** This event will be recorded. ***

*** This event is a fundraiser and we encourage everyone to donate money directly to organizations supporting Ukraine and Russian protesters. Suggested donation starts at $5.

Organizations to support:

Donate directly to Ukraine’s military: https://bank.gov.ua/en/news/all/natsionalniy-bank-vidkriv-spetsrahunok-dlya-zboru-koshtiv-na-potrebi-armiyi

UNHCR Ukraine Emergency Relief Fund: https://give.unhcr.ca/page/100190/donate/1

JIAS Ukraine Refugee Response: https://jiastoronto.org/ukraine-crisis-update/

ROLDA, helping stranded animals/pets: https://rolda.org/breaking-news-ukraine/

Ukraine Trust Chain, helping evacuate civilians out of war zones: https://www.ukrainetrustchain.org/

Questions?

Email: puncturedlines [at] gmail.com

Bios:

Maria Bloshteyn was born in Leningrad and emigrated to Toronto when she was nine. She received her PhD from Toronto’s York University and was a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University. Her main scholarly interests lie in the field of literary and cultural exchange between Russia and the United States, with a special focus on Dostoevsky’s impact on American literature and culture. She is the author of The Making of a Counter-Culture Icon: Henry Miller’s Dostoevsky (University of Toronto Press, 2007), the translator of Alexander Galich’s Dress Rehearsal: A Story in Four Acts and Five Chapters (Slavica, 2009) and Anton Chekhov’s The Prank (NYRB Classics, 2015), and the editor of Russia is Burning: Poems of the Great Patriotic War (Smokestack Books, 2020). Her articles appeared in a number of scholarly and not-so-scholarly journals and her translations have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry (Penguin Classics, 2015).

Maria Lioutaia was born in Moscow and now lives and writes in Toronto. Her fiction has recently appeared in Ploughshares, One Story, Gulf Coast, Tin House, Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, and Conjunctions. She was a Tin House scholar, a finalist for The Iowa Review Awards, and was on the longlist for the CBC Short Story Prize four times. She holds an MFA from NYU, where she was a Goldwater Fellow. Her last name means “fierce” in Russian. She’s currently at work on a novel.

Luba Markovskaia was born in Leningrad and lives in Montreal. She holds a PhD in French literature from McGill University and works as an independent literary and cultural translator. Her writing on language, identity, and immigration has appeared in publications such as Moebius, Spirale, and Nuit blanche, as well as in translation in Maisonneuve Magazine and Quebec Reads, and was shortlisted for the French CBC Nonfiction Prize. In 2021, she received the John Glassco Translation Prize for her translation of Elena Johnson’s Field Notes for the Alpine Tundra. She sits on the editorial board of Spirale magazine. You can visit her LTAC profile and connect with her on Twitter at @luba_mark.

Maria Reva writes fiction and opera libretti. She is the author of the linked story collection Good Citizens Need Not Fear (Doubleday, Virago, and Knopf Canada New Face of Fiction, 2020), which was inspired by her own family’s experiences in Ukraine. Maria’s stories have appeared in The Atlantic, McSweeney’s, Granta, The Journey Prize Stories, The Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. She won a National Magazine Award in 2019 and was a finalist for the Writers’ Trust of Canada 2020 Fiction Prize. Maria was born in Ukraine and grew up in New Westminster, British Columbia. She received her MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas.

Julia Zarankin is the author of FIELD NOTES FROM AN UNINTENTIONAL BIRDER. Her writing has appeared in Audubon, Canadian Geographic, ON Nature, The Walrus, The Globe and Mail, Birding Magazine, Hazlitt, Threepenny Review, and Orion Magazine. She was recently a finalist for the CBC Short Story prize (2020). When not hanging out with a spotting scope at sewage lagoons or working furiously at her desk, Julia lectures to lifelong learners in and around Toronto. Zarankin is currently at work on a novel that features, among other things, a Babushka Beauty Pageant.

Born in St. Petersburg back when it was Leningrad, Lea Zeltserman was raised in Edmonton and now calls Toronto home. She writes about Soviet-Jewish food, history, immigration, and culture. Her work has appeared in the Globe and Mail, Tablet, the Forward, Chatelaine, Today’s Parent, Walrus, and others. An essay on Soviet-Jewish food was included in the 100 Jewish Foods anthology from Tablet Magazine. She also publishes the Soviet-Samovar, a monthly round-up of FSU writing. Find her online at https://leazeltserman.com or on Twitter at https://twitter.com/zeltserman and Instagram: @leazelt.

Ukraine Fundraiser and Reading in Philadelphia by the Cheburashka Collective on March 24

Our friends The Cheburashki, “a growing collective of women & nonbinary writers who are emigres/refugees/first-generation from countries that were once a part of the Eastern bloc,” are hosting a reading in Philadelphia next week. Here’s a great place to find some camaraderie in this time of war and donate money for Ukrainian refugees.

This event is happening in conjunction with AWP, a poets and writers conference that will include several important events with USSR diaspora writers. We made a list.

Here’s their flyer and details of the event:

Details:

Poems and Stories by the Cheburashka Collective

March 24, 6-8 pm

Slought
4017 Walnut St
Philadelphia, PA 19104

Voices for Ukraine: Video from the Words Together Worlds Apart Reading

Here’s a video from yesterday’s poetry reading featuring poets from Ukraine and their English-language translators. Thanks to poets Olga Livshin and Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach who organized this event 800 people from across the globe came together for Ukraine. This event, put together as a part of an ongoing poetry series Words Together Worlds Apart was a fundraiser, and it’s not too late to DONATE to UNICEF.

Here’s a more comprehensive list of organizations that accept donations for Ukraine.

*Words Together Worlds Apart spearheaded by poet Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach is a virtual reading series. Its mission is: “To maintain & build literary community across distance through our shared love of words. Featured readers will share their work around a weekly theme, followed by interactive discussion.”

Voices for Ukraine: A Words Together Worlds Apart Reading

Many of us have been wondering how to help Ukrainians who are under a renewed attack from Russia. Poets Olga Livshin and Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach have put together a reading by poets from Ukraine writing in Ukrainian and Russian, and translated to English. Read the event description below and register for the event happening March 1 at 12:30pm ET. This message includes links to organizations where you can make donations to support Ukraine in this time of war.

*Words Together Worlds Apart spearheaded by poet Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach is a virtual reading series. Its mission is: “To maintain & build literary community across distance through our shared love of words. Featured readers will share their work around a weekly theme, followed by interactive discussion.”

From Olga and Julia:

Amid the current catastrophe in Ukraine, a brutal invasion of a sovereign nation, it is more urgent than ever to listen to the voices of its people. While media provides overwhelming coverage, literature, poetry, and art are just as important for processing, coping, and surviving trauma.

Hosts Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach and Olga Livshin unite Ukrainian poets and their translators alongside US poet-allies in Voices for Ukraine–a transatlantic reading spanning from Kyiv, Odesa, and Lviv, to LA, Atlanta, Philly, and Little Rock, as well as recordings Ukrainian poets have sent in the event they are unable to join us live due to internet outages and air raids. 

***Please note that you need to register on Zoom. Another way to register is through event page on Facebook.

Readers include:

Ilya Kaminsky
Katie Farris
Carolyn Forché
Boris Khersonsky *
Lyudmyla Khersonska *
Lyuba Yakimchuk *
Iya Kiva *
Oksana Lutsyshyna

Oksana Maksymchuk *
Dzvinia Orlowsky
Vitaly Chernetsky
Yuliya Chernyshova *
Danyil Zadorozhnyi *
Ostap Slyvynsky *
Katherine E Young

Boris Dralyuk
Olena Jennings
Amelia Mukamel Glaser
Yuliya Ilchuk
Hilah Kohen
Joy David
Victoria Juharyan

We need their voices and they need our support and collective action. Our solidarity! (*indicates poets speaking from Ukraine).  

There is a suggested $5 donation to support the reading series, which can be paid via Venmo @ Julia-Dasbach or PayPal: jkolch@gmail.com. Contributions are always welcome but never required, anything you give, big or small, helps. 90% of all the funds collected today go towards https://www.unicefusa.org/stories/unicef-children-are-bearing-brunt-intensifying-crisis-ukraine/39481 getting humanitarian aid to the children in Ukraine. For more reputable organizations you can donate to, see the following list: https://helpukrainewin.org/?ref=producthunt&fbclid=IwAR0z0tCZO_rqfVKHThRbwptC3VaSwVC9aHrXxFvTwsn550f7jjxk-UYtOMU

Even through this unbearable ache, let’s try to find solace in each other’s words together, as we stay worlds apart.

Going to AWP22? Panels not to miss!

Annual conference of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs is coming up March 23-26, and will be held in Philadelphia as well as online. The conference will include a number of events featuring writers that we follow, writers with a connection to the former Soviet Union and diaspora spaces. Take a look at our list, and please note that some of these will be in-person, while others are virtual.

T119. Publishing Your First Story Collection (Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry, Matthew Lansburgh, Caroline Kim, Rachel Swearingen, Jen Fawkes)

Finding a publisher for a collection of short stories continues to be a daunting task. Five prize-winning authors lead a discussion detailing their journeys to publishing their first books. They will talk about how they landed their first publications, how they developed and shaped their short story collections, how they began to look for publishers, and other related topics such as submitting fiction to journals and national contests, querying agents, and overcoming rejection.

T145. Artist & Scholar: What to Expect & How to Thrive in a Creative Writing PhD (Tatiana Duvanova, Afua -Rachel- Ansong, Jerriod Avant, Sue Y. Kim)

PhD programs require artists to deftly navigate academia in ways that are distinct from MFA programs. Panelists will share what aspects of the PhD experience can aid the creative process and prepare candidates for post-PhD careers. Topics include how to utilize critical research—such as course work and comprehensive exams—to build a creative bank, how to establish a committee, and how to fashion an inspiring writing community while fulfilling the challenging requirements of a PhD program.

T177. Re-Presenting the Past: Poets Writing the Holocaust Toward a Humane Future (Maya Pindyck, Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, Elana Bell, Luisa Muradyan, Alicia Ostriker)

What can writing poetry about the intergenerational trauma of the Holocaust do to address white supremacy? How can Jewish poets—specifically mothers—rewrite a narrative of exceptionalism for future generations while staying true to the particularities of Holocaust trauma? This panel takes up these questions through the voices of five poets, all mothers, whose writing explores intersections of Jewish trauma, inheritance, motherhood, and poetry’s capacities for antiracist work.

T184. L’Chaim! Celebrating Jewish Poetry in the Third Millennium (Matthew Silverman, Nancy Naomi Carlson, Ilya Kaminsky, Joy Ladin, Zilka Joseph)

What is a “Jewish poem”? Come find out as we read from 101 Jewish Poems for the Third Millennium, a new anthology, featuring voices that range from emerging to established, both Jewish and non-Jewish, as well as several translations. The themes range from observing Jewish traditions to more modern ones, such as same-sex marriage and nonfaith. With the rise in anti-Semitism and other hate crimes in this country, it is more important now than ever before to celebrate diversity.

F127. Admit It, You’re Writing a Poem: Ars Poetica & the Awkward Confession (Chloe Martinez, Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, Diamond Forde, Rachel Zucker, Matthew Olzmann)

An ars poetica is a poem about poetry, one that makes an argument about what poetry should be or that explores why we write. In writing an ars poetica, though, poets must also confess to craft, artifice, and intention—to this strange thing we’re doing, making art out of life. What else comes out when we pull back the curtain on our own making? What does this form give us permission to say? Panelists will read and discuss both their own work and key examples by others; audience Q&A will follow.

F142. Writing Resilience: A Reading by Neurodiverse Writers (Larissa Shmailo, Jonathan Penton, Meg Tuite, Anna Fridlis, Sandra Kleven)

This reading features writers affected by trauma, addiction, and/or mental illness. Panelists will present their stories to empower themselves and others who have these stigmatized disabilities. Panelists will come out as neurodiverse as they inspire their listeners with their literary memoirs; audience members, including the neurotypical, will be able to identify with their struggles, triumphs, and resilience. The panel will demonstrate that mentally ill does not mean mentally weak.

F207. Translingual Philadelphia: A Reading by the Transversal Translation Collective (Elizabeth Rose, Hilah Kohen, Nicholas Glastonbury , Meg Arenberg, Carlos José Pérez Sámano )

Transversal is a translation collective formed during the pandemic to give translators in the Philadelphia area and across the world a virtual place to form connections, build accountability, and share work and resources. A diverse assemblage of language pairs, backgrounds, and abilities, Transversal has quickly become an important gathering space for many. Five translators from the collective will contextualize their work, share insights into translator solidarity, and give a bilingual reading.

F208. Expanding the Fictional Terrain: Four Writers, Four Collections, Four Awards (Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry, Caroline Kim, Michael X- Wang, Rachel Swearingen)

From social realism to speculative fiction, from American tales to immigrant lit, from heterosexual narratives to LGBTQ stories—Caroline Kim (the 2020 Drue Heinz Literature Prize), Michael X. Wang (the 2021 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize), Rachel Swearingen (the 2018 New American Fiction Prize), and Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry (the 2020 Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction) will read from their award-winning collections on themes of love, loss, and cultural identity.

S112. What Kind of Times Are These?: Immigrant Poets & the New Politics of Resistance (Olga Livshin, Mariya Deykute, Lana Spendl, Larissa Shmailo, Anna Halberstadt)

Adrienne Rich writes: “I’ve walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don’t be fooled / this isn’t a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here.” This panel is about English language poets from Eastern Europe writing about the parallels between their homes and the US: nationalism, nativism, homophobia, and human rights abuses. We discuss new strategies of resistance for more than one culture and explore how poets co-opt the language of oppressors for their own power.

S159. The Art of Pitching Nonfiction: How to Sell Your Essays, Reporting, & More (Caleb Johnson, Irina Zhorov, Jenny Tinghui Zhang, Latria Graham)

The first impression a writer makes on an editor happens in the pitch. But what exactly does a successful pitch look like? How long should one even be? What elements should a pitch contain in order to get that coveted assignment? Four writers with experience publishing reportage, essays, profiles, and other nonfiction discuss how to grab an editor’s attention with a pitch that tells a compelling story and how to pivot if a pitch gets turned down.

S161. The Lyric Field: The State of Indie Poetry Publishing Now & in the Future (Marc Vincenz, Dennis Maloney, Matvei Yankelevich, Peter Conners)

Established indie publishers White Pine Press, Ugly Duckling Press, MadHat Press, and BOA Editions discuss the ins and outs of the current sphere of independent poetry publishing. Topics willl include the manuscript selection process (including contests and open submissions), layout and design, PR, marketing, distribution, reviews, the real economics of running a successful poetry press, current trends and waves, technology, and the future.

S177. Deep Vellum Presents: First- & Second-Generation Immigrant Writers (Sebastián Páramo, Fowzia Karimi, Sophia Terazawa, Taisia Kitaiskaia, Mike Soto)

In 2020, Deep Vellum, a press with its origins in publishing works in translation, made the decision to publish stateside authors. By happenstance, many of the debut authors were children of immigrants. Panelists discuss their work and what it means to be American authors publishing alongside works in translation.

Got more? Share them in the comments. And if you attend and want to share your impressions, please send your notes and pictures to puncturedlines [at] gmail.com.

Born in the USSR, Raised in California: Video Recording

Thanks to everyone who could attend our event on Saturday, December 4th, and thank you all for your engagement and for your wonderful questions. For those of you who couldn’t make it, here’s the video recording from the event and links to our work.

Seven immigrant writers read their fiction and nonfiction related to immigration, identity, family history and the mother tongue(s). Let’s talk about buckwheat and pickled herring with beets. What do you do if your children refuse to eat traditional foods? Or when your dying grandmother forgets English and Russian and begins speaking to you in Yiddish? Does a Soviet-era secret still matter when the country no longer exists? We explore love, life, loss and the nuances of living with a hybrid identity.

Masha Rumer’s nonfiction book, Parenting with an Accent: How Immigrants Honor Their Heritage, Navigate Setbacks, and Chart New Paths for Their Children, is forthcoming from Beacon Press in November 2021. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Moscow Times, Scary Mommy, and Parents, winning awards from the New York Press Association. She was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. You can connect with her on Twitter @mashaDC and on her website and order her book here.

Sasha Vasilyuk is a Russian-American writer who grew up between Moscow and San Francisco. With a MA in Journalism from New York University, she has written for Harper’s Bazaar, The Telegraph, Narrative, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Newsweek, and Reed. She has won the Solas Award for Best Travel Writing and a NATJA award. Sasha lives in San Francisco where she is working on a novel. You can connect with her on social @sashavasilyuk and find her work highlights here.

Tatyana Sundeyeva is a Russian-Jewish writer and novelist originally from Kishinev, Moldova. She writes short fiction, travel writing, and Young Adult novels and has been published in Cleaver and Hadassah Magazine. She is also on the Executive Committee of San Francisco’s Litquake Festival. You can find her at Tatyanawrites.com or @TeaOnSundey

Yelena Furman was born in Kiev and lives in Los Angeles, where she teaches Russian literature at UCLA. Her fiction has appeared in Narrative, book reviews in the Los Angeles Review of Books and The Baffler, and articles on Russian-American fiction, contemporary Russian women writers, and Virginia Woolf’s translation of Dostoevsky in various academic venues. With Olga Zilberbourg she co-runs Punctured Lines, a feminist blog on post-Soviet and diaspora literatures. You can connect with her on Twitter at @YelenaFurman.

Maggie Levantovskaya emigrated from Kiev, Ukraine, to San Francisco at the age of ten. She’s a nonfiction writer whose work has appeared in The Rumpus, Michigan Quarterly Review, Catapult, and Lithub. She teaches in the English department at Santa Clara University. You can find her work on her website and connect on Twitter @MLevantovskaya.

Vlada Teper’s essays have been featured in “Perspectives” on KQED. Her poetry has appeared in the Oberon Poetry Magazine and TulipTree Review, among others. A writer, teacher, and entrepreneur, Vlada is the recipient of the 826 Valencia Teacher of the Month Award, and the founder of I M U. She is currently completing her debut novel about
being a substitute teacher in a Sex Ed high school class. You can find her on Twitter at @VladaTeper.

Olga Zilberbourg is the author of LIKE WATER AND OTHER STORIES (WTAW Press) and three Russian-language story collections. She has published fiction and essays in Electric Literature, Lit Hub, Alaska Quarterly Review, Confrontation, Scoundrel Time, and elsewhere. She writes book reviews for The Common, co-edits Punctured Lines, and co-hosts the San Francisco Writers Workshop. You can find her work on her website, connect on Twitter @bowlga, and order her book here.

Born in the USSR, Raised in California: Immigrant Writers Read From Their Work

Dear Punctured Lines readers — come meet us on Zoom, and help us celebrate the publication of Masha Rumer’s book! (In San Francisco? Come meet us in person, details below.) We’re so happy to welcome Masha’s newly published Parenting With an Accent: How Immigrants Honor Their Heritage, Navigate Setbacks, and Chart New Paths for Their Children (Beacon Press). Punctured Lines published a Q&A with Masha when this book was still in the proposal stage, and we’ve been following Masha’s Twitter posts about its development with great interest and anticipation. Now that this book is out and available for all to read we are ready to party (and encourage all of our readers to buy it)!

This upcoming event will feature Masha Rumer herself and our blog co-founders Yelena Furman and Olga Zilberbourg alongside the brilliant Maggie Levantovskaya, Vlada Teper, Sasha Vasilyuk, and Tatyana Sundeeva, all immigrant writers, all born in the USSR.

We will read excerpts from our fiction and nonfiction related to immigration, identity, family history, and the mother tongue(s). Let’s talk about buckwheat and pickled herring with beets. What do you do if your children refuse to eat traditional foods? Or when your dying grandmother forgets English and Russian and begins speaking to you in Yiddish? Does a Soviet-era secret still matter when the country no longer exists? We will explore love, life, loss, and the nuances of living with a hybrid identity.

Mark your calendars for a Zoom event on December 4, 2021, at 4 pm PT, hosted by Folio Books in San Francisco!

In San Francisco? Come meet Masha Rumer and Olga Zilberbourg in person. On Sunday, December 5, 2021, at 11 am, they will be at Folio Books signing books! Olga will be signing her book LIKE WATER AND OTHER STORIES (WTAW Press).

Please RSVP to receive the Zoom link on Facebook or on the Eventbrite page!

Masha Rumer’s nonfiction book, Parenting with an Accent: How Immigrants Honor Their Heritage, Navigate Setbacks, and Chart New Paths for Their Children, is forthcoming from Beacon Press in November 2021. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Moscow Times, Scary Mommy, and Parents, winning awards from the New York Press Association. She was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. You can connect with her on Twitter @mashaDC and on her website and order her book here.

Sasha Vasilyuk is a Russian-American writer who grew up between Moscow and San Francisco. With a MA in Journalism from New York University, she has written for Harper’s Bazaar, The Telegraph, Narrative, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Newsweek, and Reed. She has won the Solas Award for Best Travel Writing and a NATJA award. Sasha lives in San Francisco where she is working on a novel. You can connect with her on social @sashavasilyuk and find her work highlights here.

Tatyana Sundeyeva is a Russian-Jewish writer and novelist originally from Kishinev, Moldova. She writes short fiction, travel writing, and Young Adult novels and has been published in Cleaver and Hadassah Magazine. She is also on the Executive Committee of San Francisco’s Litquake Festival. You can find her at Tatyanawrites.com or @TeaOnSundey

Yelena Furman was born in Kiev and lives in Los Angeles, where she teaches Russian literature at UCLA. Her fiction has appeared in Narrative, book reviews in the Los Angeles Review of Books and The Baffler, and articles on Russian-American fiction, contemporary Russian women writers, and Virginia Woolf’s translation of Dostoevsky in various academic venues. With Olga Zilberbourg she co-runs Punctured Lines, a feminist blog on post-Soviet and diaspora literatures. You can connect with her on Twitter at @YelenaFurman.

Maggie Levantovskaya emigrated from Kiev, Ukraine, to San Francisco at the age of ten. She’s a nonfiction writer whose work has appeared in The Rumpus, Michigan Quarterly Review, Catapult, and Lithub. She teaches in the English department at Santa Clara University. You can find her work on her website and connect on Twitter @MLevantovskaya.

Vlada Teper’s essays have been featured in “Perspectives” on KQED. Her poetry has appeared in the Oberon Poetry Magazine and TulipTree Review, among others. A writer, teacher, and entrepreneur, Vlada is the recipient of the 826 Valencia Teacher of the Month Award, and the founder of I M U. She is currently completing her debut novel about
being a substitute teacher in a Sex Ed high school class. You can find her on Twitter at @VladaTeper.

Olga Zilberbourg is the author of LIKE WATER AND OTHER STORIES (WTAW Press) and three Russian-language story collections. She has published fiction and essays in Electric Literature, Lit Hub, Alaska Quarterly Review, Confrontation, Scoundrel Time, and elsewhere. She writes book reviews for The Common, co-edits Punctured Lines, and co-hosts the San Francisco Writers Workshop. You can find her work on her website, connect on Twitter @bowlga, and order her book here.