Jonathan Maniscalco has taught English to ESL learners in Japan, Spain, and New York City. A Massachusetts native, he is a graduate of Boston University and a stringer for the New England Review of Books. Ten Stories to Manhood is his first published book. Via Zoom, registration required.
Olga Livshin will discuss how culture, translation, history, current events and her own biography intermingle in her 2019 book of poems, A Life Replaced, which reflects on the experience of living as an immigrant under the Trump administration and with Putin’s war on Ukraine looming. Raised in Odessa and Moscow, Livshin writes witness poetry about xenophobia, war, and strongmen at the helm on both sides of the world. The book braids original poetry in English with translations from Anna Akhmatova, the great poet of 20th-century Russia, and Vladimir Gandelsman, fellow immigrant and winner of the Moscow Reckoning, Russia’s highest prize for poetry. Livshin’s poems, translations, and essays appear in The Kenyon Review and Poetry International, and are widely published. She holds a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literature, and taught at the university level for a number of years before focusing on writing and translation.
Please join us in the May Room for a reception immediately following the lecture.
Sponsored by the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University and by the Russian Department at Wheaton College.
Tommy “Teebs” Pico describes himself as a poet (he guesses), a screenwriter (or whatever), a co-host of a dumb podcast for jerks, and begrudgingly as a performer. His books, IRL, Nature Poem, Junk and Feed have received numerous accolades including the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, a Lambda Literary Award, an American Book Award and the prestigious Whiting Award.
Wheaton alumna Sandra Yannone’s poetry amplifies the split-second when the everyday turns into catastrophe; the moment of impact when knowing and unknowing collide; the fusion of before and after. And the aftermaths. All constellate here in Yannone’s first full-length collection, Boats for Women, to orient us toward that “choice/to turn toward a sacred face, a turn/toward your own longing to live.”