Writers and Hackers

On By Olga ZilberbourgIn Event, ReadingsLeave a comment

Dear friends,

This Friday, San Francisco Writers Workshop — the group I’ve been co-moderating for over 10 years — is celebrating its 80th anniversary. According to lore, it was started by two female poets in the aftermath of WWII in 1946, and has been meeting every Tuesday night in San Francisco ever since. It’s a free, drop in workshop for writers of all kinds, and to join, just show up.

For the past four years, we’ve been meeting at Noisebridge, a legendary anarchist hacker space in the Mission. I’ve written in the past about Noisebridge’s financial troubles, and thanks to our collective efforts, they’ve been able to stabilize — yet their expenses remain large. We’re gathering on Friday to continue fundraising for Noisebridge, to ensure survival of this vibrant creative community.

A flyer announcing an event called Literary devices: Writers and Hackers for Noisebridge. The image includes six portraits of authors and event details echo the accompanying post.

June 12, 7 pm, 272 Capp Street. These writers are incredible. Come hear their work!

For our event this year, we’re partnering with hackers who will create gadgets and objects to go with the stories our amazing writers have submitted, and we’ll have something like a competition for the hackers, with prizes of dubious value. We’ll also have a proper reading, a book raffle, food and drink, and lots of opportunities to mingle and explore the space. Come and hang out — it’ll be a blast!

I’ll be moderating on Friday, and to hear my own work, come hang out with me again on Sunday, June 14!

June is Pride month in San Francisco, and this year, I’m delighted to participate in the festivities thanks to FLORID, “San Francisco’s most delicate and debonair drag offering.” How cool is that??

Below is the description of the show from its organizers. I’m appearing around 5 pm with two flash fictions:

Find us the secret garden behind Chartreuse by RoJe, at 2095 Market Street at Church. Running monthly from June to October 2026, FLORID offers not only some of the finest drag artists working in the Bay Area, but also premium taste offerings and world premiere literature! One afternoon only – Sunday, June 14th, 3-7pm!

Our June offering is a nod to the upcoming Pride season: PANSIES ON PARADE! Featuring Chester Vanderbox, Fullout Fritzie, and Carlota diCarlo, FLORID promises pageantry and pomp as only consummate queens can deliver! Bask in the fresh air for an afternoon of festive frivolity with FLORID!

This year, Chartreuse is partnering with neighborhood mainstay The Pilsner Inn, to supply full bar service to its patrons. This allows FLORID to move from its previous all-inclusive ticket to a more accessible admission of $35, with performer tips and bar sales managed via cash or Venmo. For reservations: https://partiful.com/e/2kwXfYp3iJe0V2wwhWuh

Huge thanks to Becka for introducing me to Sean of FLORID. Becka runs BOOKS NOT BANS nonprofit that expands access to literature by delivering great books to people across the country. Book censorship in the United States is on the rise, and supporting this organization is a wonderful way to resist that. Becka also hosts incredible events locally, for example Aug 15 Valley of the Dolls showing at The Roxie theater at 5 pm. Watch the movie and engage with a vital cause!

Happy Pride, happy reading, and keep in touch!

Olga

The Undead

On By Olga ZilberbourgIn Event, Wonderful Books2 Comments

Art and politics: who has anything to say on this topic? What about: Art and politics and zombies? In particular, a zombie Lenin, arisen from the mausoleum and aiming to seize control of the Kremlin. That’s the setup of a movie that Maya, the protagonist of Svetlana Satchkova’s novel THE UNDEAD manages to get produced in Moscow in 2017. Maya is a recent graduate of a fancy film school and all she wants to do is to make her artistic mark on the world. She really, really doesn’t want to anything to do with contemporary politics, and it’s really too bad for her that in Putin’s Russia there’s no more room for romp. Everyone is a potential target. Satchkova uses her protagonist to show us how Russia’s political machine has leveraged its control of free expression.

If you’re able, come help Sasha Vasilyuk and me celebrate Svetlana Satchkova’s humorous and illuminating English language debut, THE UNDEAD, at Globus Books later this month. Please RSVP.

Yellow flyer with red letters announcing the event -- details in the post.

Event details:
May 21, 6:30 PM
Globus Books, 332 Balboa Street, SF
Snacks!!

Please buy the book and support the bookstore, an anchor of transeurasian life here in San Francisco. They are performing such an incredible service for all of us!

Among her other, much more glamorous credits, Satchkova is a long-time contributor to Punctured Lines, the feminist blog about the literatures of the former USSR and diaspora that Yelena Furman and I run. Satchkova’s contributions include interviews with some of the preeminent writers working in Russian today, starting from introducing us to the work of Tatsiana Zamirovskaya back in 2020 (first published in Storytel and translated to English by Fiona Bell), her interviews with Anna Starobinets and Maria Stepanova, and including a translation of an interview Satchkova gave to Egor Mikhailov of Afisha Daily about a Russian-language novel of hers published in 2021, People and Birds.

(Those of you who read both Satchkova’s interview on Punctured Lines and THE UNDEAD will be able to easily answer the question: Which character in the novel shares the most biographical details with the author? Hint: it’s not Maya, the protagonist.)

For more insights into Satchkova’s writing process and inspiration about THE UNDEAD — the novel immerses us in Moscow’s film industry, how does she know all of this? — read Sasha Vasilyuk’s interview with her on Electric Literature.

If you can’t make the event, please buy and read the book and leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon (and Storygraph and everywhere else you can think of). Since all of our writerly brilliance must be encapsulated by commercial engines in order to have a chance to get out to readers out there.

Spring Opportunities

On By Olga ZilberbourgIn Book panel, Event, ReadingsLeave a comment

Literary life in the Bay Area is booming, friends. No doubt in response to the increasing violence the world, people are writing, and they are coming together to share their work.

My friend, writer and librarian Monica Nolan is starting a writing group at Excelsior Branch Library. The first meetup is next Wednesday, March 25. And over in Oakland, my friend, writer Tahirah Dean is collaborating to start a generative Writer’s Circle at Nomadic Bookshop. Their first meeting is on Saturday, March 28. Both groups are free of charge and open to all interested writers.

On Monday, April 6, I will be heading over to Clio’s to moderate a panel of three Jewish-American writers with roots in what is now Ukraine. Poet Natalya Sukhonos will be introducing her third book of poems, Sunlight Trapped in Stone, in which she explores her background as an immigrant from Ukraine and recent work helping Ukrainian refugees as well as received historical memory of Holodomor famine and WWII stories of survival. Miryam (Bela) Sas will be introducing her memoir Milk in an Eggshell, forthcoming this fall, that traces her family’s roots to the town of Zbaraż (now in Ukraine, formerly Poland) and connects her family’s story of survival to their struggles after immigration to the United States. The title of our panel, The Memory Picture, comes from the work of Maggie Levantovskaya, whose work in progress Foreign Body: A Memoir of Lupus, Academia and Belonging is about negotiating chronic illness while attempting to become a scholar and process long-held feelings of alienation as a Jewish-Ukrainian immigrant.

The writers on this panel each have three, very different ways of connecting to contemporary Ukraine, as well as three very different artistic sensibilities. I will be asking them questions about the nuanced ways they work with memory, resisting easy answers and comparisons with the past, while pushing us to consider new perspectives. How can we resist the weaponization of traumatic stories for authoritarian aims?

I promise a rich conversation. For more details and to register, please go to this Eventbrite page.

And if you haven’t yet made it to Clio’s, a unique Oakland bookstore and bar, come just to check it out. The books are organized in chronological order!! Really, think about it! The bar serves delicious drinks and tinned fish for snacks. It’s so hip! The place opened a couple of years ago and has been thriving. If you’re lucky, you’ll meet poet Josh Peralta there. He helps to run events among many other things. Buy his book and please buy all the books to support all the writers.

And if you feel inspired and want to improve your craft, consider taking one of the fiction classes my friend Evgeniya Dame is offering this Spring. Your choices are: ELEVATE YOUR CRAFT: FICTION WORKSHOP [in person on Stanford Campus], THE ARC OF THE STORY [in person at Left Margin Lit, Berkeley], or SPRING CLEAN YOUR STORY: A STEP BY STEP REVISION GUIDE [online through Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance].

Best Literary Translations and Baltimore

On By Olga ZilberbourgIn book, Event, Publication, Readings, TranslationLeave a comment

Three years ago, in preparation for a literary reading in support of Ukraine, I asked a Kyiv-based poet Olga Bragina for the permission to translate her poems. I’d been reading her poems on Facebook and had become a fan, and I had an idea of how she might sound in my English. Though I’d been writing in English for a couple of decades at that point, as a translator I was a newbie. But, I dared. And Olga kindly took a chance on me.

It’s very rewarding that one of my translations of her poems, first published by Consequence, has been selected to appear in Best Literary Translations 2026, an anthology coming out from Deep Vellum Press. This poem was chosen by the new U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze, and also by the series co-editors, Noh Anothai, Wendy Call, Öykü Tekten and Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún. (Wendy Call is the editor I’ve been most directly in touch with, and I’m so impressed with her energy and dedication.)

A book with a purple cover displayed on the background of mossy bricks Best Literary Translations 2026 U.S. Poet Laureate ARTHUR SZE Guest Editor Noh Anothai Wendy Call Oyku Tekten Kola Tubosun Series Co-editors

It’s a beautiful book that collects a great many powerful and unexpected voices. For a reader, it’s a thrilling ride. Please pre-order a copy from the publisher, and ask your library to order a copy. Rate and review to amplify!

Russia’s war against Ukraine continues. Most of you have probably seen the reporting about Russia’s assault on Ukraine’s electric grid, among other horrors. As creative writers, my peers and I respond to this aggression in a variety of ways from a wide range of our subjective positions. If you can be in Baltimore on March 6th this year, come to the event I describe below to hear 26 (!!) of us.

We’re calling this event Eastern European Voices for Resistance and Reinvention. Take a look at our amazing flyer, designed by Ena Selimović of Turkoslavia translation collective and journal.

Background: Blue with a black X in the lower right corner Foreground: Words in black read : Resistance + Reinvention Words in Yellow Read: Eastern European Voices March 6, 7:00-9:30 pm Library Nineteen 606 S. Ann St, Baltimore MD, 21231 Words in white read : A benefit reading for Ukraine Words in white read:This one-of-a-kind reading brings together writers from Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet countries who now make their homes across the United States. Taking place during the 2026 AWP Conference, the event celebrates a growing circle of poets, prose writers, and translators from complex, cross-cultural identities whose work is shaped by displacement and immigration, survival and resilience. Featuring Words in white read: Alina Adams, Valerie Bandura, Svetlana Binshtok, Daniel Blokh, Katie Farris, Katarzyna Jakubiak, Victoria Juharyan, Andrea Jurjevic, Ilya Kaminsky, Julia Kolchinsky, Maria Kuznetsova, Ellen Litman, Olga Livshin, olga mikolaivna, Asya Partan, Irina Reyn, Ena Selimović, Lucy Silbaugh, Lana Spendl, Alina Stefanescu, Natalya Sukhonos, Vlada Teper, Katherine E. Young, Tatsiana Zamirovskaya, Olga Zilberbourg, and Lena Zycinsky.

For more details, take a look at our Eventbrite page. If you’re able to attend, please do register. We expect this event to sell out. Please bring friends and share with people you know in Baltimore and Washington, DC area. And whether or not you can make it, donate to Ukraine TrustChain or your favorite organizations that support Ukraine.

Stories on Stage

On By Olga ZilberbourgIn Book review, Event, Links, Prose review, Publication, Publishing, Readings, short story4 Comments

I’m delighted to announce that on Sunday, February 8, 2026 my work will be featured in a reading in Davis, CA called Stories on Stage. A professional actor Eileen Hoang will perform my story “Doctor Sveta” from LIKE WATER AND OTHER STORIES.

The event starts at 4 pm at Sudwerk Brewing Company in Davis, CA. I can’t wait to see how Eileen might interpret my story “Doctor Sveta,” a historical fiction set during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Huge thanks to organizer, author Jeri Howitt, for putting this together, to the whole team behind the event, and to writer Karolina Letunova for recommending my book.

This weekend, I spent an afternoon with a group of about thirty high school students who identify as writers. They banded together to organize Women’s Youth Writing Association (WYWA) with chapters in four local high schools and invited me and Leyla Brittan to give a talk about our writing and writing careers. The participants asked savvy questions about building characters, addressing hyphenated identities on the page, overcoming blocks, finding submissions opportunities, and experimenting with genres. In the face of ever-increasing violence and political instability in the country and in the world, I found this event particularly nourishing. These youths are so talented and motivated!

I have three more links for you today.

  • I reviewed a collection Stories from the Edge of the Sea by a Vietnamese-American writer Andrew Lam for The Common. I’m a big fan of Andrew’s work, and I argue in the essay that he really expands and complicates our ideas of what a short story can be. Also, soup.

  • I reviewed a novel The Disappearing Act by a Russian author in exile, Maria Stepanova, translated by her long-term collaborator, poet Sasha Dugdale for On the Seawall. Writing this piece, I made up a pseudo-psychological term “the beast anxiety” to describe the state of mind of Stepanova’s protagonist. Then, I immediately diagnosed myself with the symptoms.

  • On Punctured Lines this month, read an excerpt from Nadezhda in the Dark, a novel written in verse by Ukrainian-French-American writer Yelena Moskovich. My tagline for this book: The Iliad for post-Soviet Jewish dykes. It’s wild.

Meet me in Washington, DC; my parents’ novel; and more good things

On By Olga ZilberbourgIn Event, Newsletter, prize, review, Wonderful BooksLeave a comment

I’m heading to the East Coast for a conference next week, and am using an opportunity to present my work and (re)connect with writers and readers in Washington, DC area. On December 16 at 6 pm, come to “A Literary Lagniappe,” a reading and open mic by friends of Bergstrom Books, a foreign-language books purveyor in Kensingon, MD.

This event, hosted by a nearby Kensington Row Bookshop (3786 Howard Ave, Kensington, MD), will have a Central and East European focus, and will include original work, translation, and music. As you can tell from the flyer, we’re planning to keep it festive! Please register on Eventbrite and share with friends.

Translator and poet Katherine E. Young might read from her translations of Azerbaijani writer Akram Aylisli. Ena Selimović, Yugoslav-born translator and a co-founder of one of my favorite literary magazines, Turkoslavia, will read from Tatjana Gromača’s novella Black, newly translated. Roman Kostovski, a translator, musician, and publisher of Plamen Press, that specializes in books in translation from Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe (and published Aylisli’s PEOPLE AND TREES), might perform some music as well as read! Greg Bergstein, my fellow St. Petersburgian who takes inspiration from both James Joyce and Daniil Kharms might read one of his fictions.

***

In other news, check out Lina Turygina’s essay “Thinking Reeds and Foolish Weeds: On Emigration and Adaptation.” In it, Turygina (a Harvard Ph.D. student!) compares my stories with the work of Nina Berberova (!!!) –an iconic writer of the first wave of Russian emigration. “Navigating her position as a bicultural writer, Zilberbourg moves fluidly between languages, omitting details in one version, using grammar creatively in another, and always finding new ways to adapt.” My next story is going to have to feature the burdock plant — I have so many associations!

***

As some of you know, in the 60s and 70s, my dad was in a popular student rock band in Leningrad, “The Green Ants.” They performed at his university and also toured the country in the summers as a part of student work brigades.

The members of the band worked with difficult teens in Karelia, built an oil pipeline in Kazakhstan, worked on railway construction, entertained locals at a restaurant on the Kola peninsula, and at nights played rock shows, bringing Western music to Soviet audiences. They also composed their own songs and fell in love and got in trouble with authorities over set lists. Playing rock music in the USSR meant making their own electric guitars, “borrowing” amplifiers from official organizations, and creatively adapting material for approval by the censorship bureaus.

Recently, my parents started taking creative writing classes and transformed my dad’s oral stories about the band into a novel WHEN ROCK-N-ROLL WAS GREEN. The book is now available for sale in Russian–look for it wherever books are sold. And if you’re in San Francisco, come to the presentation at the Richmond Library on Sunday, January 11 at 2 pm. (In Russian language, mostly. I expect songs!)

One last good thing for today: a tiny, three-paragraph-long essay on my recent reading helped me win Jewish Book Council’s Jewish Book Month & The Bet­sy Hotel Writer’s Con­test (scroll for the essay) — and later this year, I’ll be spending a few days at the Betsy Hotel in Miami, working on my new novel.

Your Presence is Mandatory

On By Olga ZilberbourgIn Event, Publication, Readings, short storyLeave a comment

Thank you so much to those of you who have been able to participate in my events in the past month. Lit Crawl was a huge success and I have really enjoyed introducing books of my writer friends to others in the bookish community.

I have one more event this holiday season to invite people in the Bay Area to. On Tuesday, December 9, come to The Sycamore (2140 Mission Street) to celebrate my friend Sasha Vasilyuk’s paperback release of her award-winning novel YOUR PRESENCE IS MANDATORY (such a good title — I just had to use it as the subject of this message).

This novel tells a story that’s very personal to me. Sasha based the book on her grandfather’s experience of being a Soviet Jewish prisoner of war in a Nazi camp. He managed to escape, and then had to hide the fact of his imprisonment from the Soviet authorities in order to avoid the Gulag. This secret came to bear on the rest of his life — and it’s an experience that my grandfather Isaac also shared. (I wrote about my grandfather in this essay for Narrative Magazine.)

Sasha is a great reader and organizer, and this event is bound to be great. Come if you can!

A poster with book cover in the middle and six author photos arranged in groups of three on both sides. YOUR PRESNENCE IS MANDATORY Tuesday, Dec 9 at 7 pm The Sycamore, 2140 Mission street Paperback party With Sasha and Friends Molly Antopol Jacqueline Doyle Lee Kravetz Sasha Vasilyuk Heather Grzych Olga Zilberbourg

In other publishing news, a story of mine called “Yes” was published in an anthology Immigrant in the City by the London Group of Multilingual Writers, led by Darya Protopopova. Stories in this book alternate between Russian and English, and include writing by my friends Maragarita Meklina and Vlada Teper, as well as work by other established and recent immigrant writers from the former USSR. Many stories address Russia’s ongoing, brutal war against Ukraine and political persecution. My contribution is an older, humorous piece about a recently divorced woman trying to be open to advances of an admirer, whose attempt to woo her with high culture (Pushkin) fails miserably.

November is for Bookish Joy — Events, Events!

On By Olga ZilberbourgIn Essay, Event, Readings, short story, Translation, Wonderful BooksLeave a comment

Here in San Francisco, the rainy season has officially begun with the first mild and fairly warm storms of the season. Who knows what new cataclysms it might bring? As my friend Gary Pendler writes in his essay “The Bike, the Branch, and the Tick”(*), after a poplar tree branch bizarrely dropped on him in Paris, we have to be prepared that “climate change might also show up in the lives of us ordinary folk and in a myriad of day-to-day incidents.”

The best place to hide from falling branches is, to my mind, a bookstore. And, speaking of Paris, I’ve been spending a lot of time there in my imagination as I’m reading my friend Bart Schneider’s book GIACOMETTI’S LAST RIDE. Giacometti, born in Switzerland, worked in Paris, and this is where Bart’s novel is set. Bart brings to life this consummate artist, in all of his human complexities and vulnerabilities. It’s a thrilling read!

Sculpture by Leonid Sokov (1994). The Meeting of Two Sculptures: Lenin and Giacometti.

Giacometti, of course, is much beloved all across Europe and the US. But when Bart first brought pages of his manuscript to the workshop that I was a part of, I had been clueless. Bart’s chapters were my first introduction to Giacometti’s legacy. Giacometti, it turns out, was one of those modernist artists who was ideologically unacceptable to the USSR, and so censored there out of existence. The first showing of his work in Russia took place in 2007. Digging deeper, I discovered this wonderful piece above by emigre artist Leonid Sokov (1987), that showcases the clash of cultures: The Meeting of Two Sculptures: Lenin and Giacometti.

A poster with two book covers. On the top right, Bart Schneider's GIACOMETTI'S LAST RIDE, on the bottom left, Olga Zilberbourg's LIKE WATER AND OTHER STORIES. The words of the announcement read: Bart Schneider reading from his new novel, GIACOMETTI'S LAST RIDE with writer Olga Zilberbourg. Telegraph Hill Books, Saturday, November 8, 6:30 pm, 1501 Grant Avenue, San Francisco, CA

In many ways Giacometti’s art, showcasing the fragility of an individual, remains political in today’s world. I’m excited to be able to talk about all this and more with Bart, who will be presenting his novel on November 8, 6:30 pm, at Telegraph Hill Books in San Francisco. I hope you can come!

I’ll also be reading from a longer essay of mine “The Richest Kid in the World” (*) that dramatizes the end of censorship in the Soviet Union.

In the spirit of continuing to unpack modernity through the post-Soviet lens while building community, I am hosting two more events this November.

An orange poster with book cover on the top left and portrait of author and translator on top right. Below, text in pink announcing 'Reading and Happy Hour with National Book Award Finalists. On the bottom right description of the event that's also in the post.
A poster with the seated figure on the foreground and Golden Gate Bridge on the background. The text reads: Routledge Author Senka Anastasova, PhD, Professor in San Francisco -- Political Narratosophy: Bizarre Exiles Against Authoritarianism, Intro: Olga Zilberbourg, November 4, 2025, 4:30 pm, Philosopher's Club, 824 Ulloa Street, Twin Peaks, West Portal, San Francisco.

1) I’m absolutely thrilled that Hamid Ismailov and Shelley Fairweather-Vega will be doing an event in San Francisco for their book WE COMPUTERS, A Ghazal Novel (Yale University Press). This book is a National Book Award finalist–the first book from Central Asia to be a finalist.

Exiled from Uzbekistan (where his books are banned), Ismailov lives in the UK. He writes in at least three languages: Uzbek, Russian, and English, and Fairweather-Vega can translate him directly from Uzbek, without going through Russian. A previous novel of Ismailov’s that Fairweather-Vega translated, GAIA, QUEEN OF THE ANTS, did a fantastic job of telling contemporary stories set in the Western world, yet tying them both to immediate Soviet and post-Soviet history of Central Asia as well as to mythological history and philosophy. It offers a truly unique and fascinating perspective on the modernity–as I expect WE COMPUTERS does as well.

Come to see this stellar duo on November 9, 6 pm at The Sycamore (2140 Mission St)!!

2) On Tuesday, November 4, 4:30 pm, I’ll be introducing a feminist philosopher from the former Yugoslavia, Senka Anastasova, at Philosophers Club (824 Ulloa St).

Anastasova is a professor of aesthetics and political philosophy at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts and Humanities, at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje. She will be introducing her Routledge Press book, POLITICAL NARRATOSOPHY: From Theory of Narration to Politics of Imagination (on Nancy Fraser, Jacques Ranciere, Paul Ricoeur).

She promises to speak on her history of “displacement, philosophy of narrating – in – the – zones – of transition, pain, dead bodies / and not – yet – dead displaced bodies, poetics of displacement and immigration, history /herstory, historiography, women’s studies and borderlands, types of exiles from one regime to another, about memory, resistance against totalitarian regimes, capital, historical materialism, freedom to choose, freedom to express today.”

This will be absolutely wild! Come.

(*) And yes, this message comes with a footnote! Gary’s essay “The Bike, the Branch, and the Tick,” and mine “The Richest Kid in the World” both appear in the same issue of the Chicago Quarterly Review. There are so many goodies there!

To Lit Crawl and Beyond!

On By Olga ZilberbourgIn Awards, Event, Links, Publication, Publishing, Readings, short story, TranslationLeave a comment

Dear friends,

As many of you know, October is Litquake month in San Francisco — our annual literary festival is already underway, with many entertaining, educational, and inspiring events. On October 25 (Saturday), the festival ends with Lit Crawl — a literary pub crawl through the Mission neighborhood.

I’m participating in two events. In Phase 1, from 5-6 pm, find me at Ruth’s Table (3160 21st St), with my fellow immigrant writers from the former USSR. This year, our theme is “Owning Fear, Reaching for Freedom.” We’re reflecting on how our community experience of living under a totalitarian regime has prepared us for the current political moment. And though the theme is as grim as the times, I promise you that the event won’t be. Events with this group of writers and translators are a wonderful occasion to celebrate community and each other’s work. We’re here to support and encourage each other to tell more stories. Too much has been silenced and swept under the rug. We’re trying to bring it all out in the open. It’s a joyous occasion!

A flyer displaying ten author's photos alongside three quarters perimeter. In the center left, in black, title of the event: OWNING FEAR, REACHING FOR FREEDOM: POST-SOVIET WRITERS AND TRANSLATORS SPEAK OUT on the right, in red: LIT CRAWL SAN FRANCISCO Below, in Blue: Sat OCTOBER 25TH 5-6 PM AT RUTH'S TABLE 2160 21st Street Sponsored by California Humanities and Ruth's Table

Then, for Phase 2, from 6:30 to 7:30 pm, I head to Noisebridge (272 Capp Street), where I will continue to celebrate my writers group. Every Tuesday night, we gather together to read each other our story drafts and to give and receive feedback on our work. This is how we learn to build stronger, more clear and nuanced, stories.

During this event, five of our amazing writers will share their work and tell us about how they’ve revised it after receiving feedback. Then, we’ll ask our audience to critique a story. Guaranteed laughs! (And also maybe it will make revision more approachable to people.)

An image of a blackboard with a stack of yellow pencils in the foreground. Text in yellow and white reads: San Francisco Writers Workshop Presents Five writers read their stories and share the feedback that made them great. Then YOU get to critique a juicy story, Live! Below: Author's portraits with signatures: Beverly Parayno Peng Ngin Tim Sullivan Jo Beckett-King Tony Tepper Below: We've Got Notes for You! October 25, 2025 Lit Crawl, Phase II, 6:30 pm Noisebridge, 272 Capp Street

Looking beyond Litquake, on Saturday, November 8, at 6 pm, I will be reading at Telegraph Hill Books alongside my friend Bart Schneider, who has just published his novel GIACOMETTI’S LAST RIDE, about the final romance of a famous Swiss sculptor, Alberto Giacometti. It’s a gorgeously produced book with illustrations by a well-known Sonoma-based artist, Chester Arnold. Bart will introduce the novel, and I will read some of my new work, and then we can talk about books and hang out. Join us!

In other news, my translations from the work of Olga Bragina have received two recent honors.
* Editors of ANMLY nominated the poems they published for a Pushcart Prize.
* One of the poems published by Consequence, has been chosen to appear in Best Literary Translations 2026 anthology, forthcoming from Deep Vellum Press. So delighted! Olga Bragina’s work deserves more recognition.

This summer, Yelena Furman and I have been able to add several publications to Punctured Lines, our feminist blog on post-Soviet and diaspora literature. We pride ourselves in amplifying work by writers from underrepresented groups in our literary space. Dive in:
* We Have to Go Back: Speculative Fiction, Nostalgia, and the Ghosts of Bookshelves Past, Guest Essay by Kristina Ten
* Queering Peripheries: Lara Vapnyar’s “Lydia’s Grove”: Soviet-Born: The Afterlives of Migration in Jewish American Fiction by Karolina Krasuska
* Seven Forty: Memoirs of a Jewish District Attorney from Soviet Ukraine by Mikhail Goldis, translated, edited, and with an Introduction by Marat Grinberg
* Graphic Novels and Memoirs of Soviet Trauma

(Apologies for the TOY STORY reference in my subject line. It’s stuck in my brain and won’t go away.)

With appreciation for you all,

Olga

On Spies and Artificial Intelligence

On By Olga ZilberbourgIn Uncategorized2 Comments

My kids are back to school this week — 2nd and 5th grade, amazingly enough. I’m back at my desk, writing stories. My head is bursting with ideas, one more complicated than the next, and I’m doing what I can to catch them all and give them room to grow.

I’ve had two very different pieces come out this summer. The first is a horror/humor science fiction piece called “The Museum of the Office,” about what happens after we humans vote in artificial intelligence to be our leaders. This piece found home in Sci Phi Journal, a lovely magazine out of Brussels, Belgium that positions itself as being at the intersection of philosophy, anthropology and SF. Gordon Johnson, an artist affiliated with the magazine, created this nifty illustration. It’s not exactly San Francisco, but possibly a museum, and it very much jives with a Dino Buzzati book I’m currently reading, The Bewitched Bourgeois. I’ll take that.

The second publication is a much older story, back online thanks to After Happy Hour Review’s special reprint issue. “How to Tell If a Student in Your Beginning Poetry Class Is a Russian Spy” was first published in 2011, in Mad Hatters’ Revew: Back from the USSR issue edited by Mariya Gusev and Alex Cigale. In Russian, the story appeared in my 2016 book, Хлоп-страна. I wrote it as a send up on current events, and I would probably be too scared or too jaded to write anything like this now, which is why it’s wonderful to have this piece as is. Of course, this is also a satire on workshop culture. Enjoy! (It starts on page 86 of this PDF.)

Happy reading!