Category: book

The Last Supper Party and Weird Science

On By Olga ZilberbourgIn book, Event, Readings4 Comments

The rains started in San Francisco yesterday, signalling a rapid turn towards winter. After the rains begin, California’s sun-burnt hills turn green and in my back yard the bougainvillea branches take off with extra color in all directions.

Our literary world is blooming too. Tonight, I’m going to a conversation between Sasha Vasilyuk and an Estonian writer Carolina Pihelgas. Tomorrow, I look forward to seeing some of you at Spill the Tea and Chopped Liver Lit Crawl events, subject of my previous email. Meantime, more events are imminent.

Have I mentioned that I’ve been working on a novel? It’s a queer love story between two immigrant characters that begins in an ESL class in London in 1996 and takes thirty years to develop. I’ll be reading an excerpt from this work on Saturday, November 7 at the Sycamore, as a part of The Last Supper Party reading series curated by Kimi Sugioka and the San Francisco International Arts Festival.

Blue poster with three author faces below and three men in tuxes above

I’ll be reading alongside with Colleen Shoshana McKee, a poet whose latest collection Feeding Ghosts is a tender and personal reflection on a relationship with a fellow Bay Area poet. Colleen is a friend whose work and its new directions has always surprised me, and I can’t wait to see what she brings to the reading in November.

This reading is an *Open Mic*, so bring your own work to read, and support The Sycamore, which is the best literary bar in the Mission. Songwriter Timothy Goodspeed will play and sing! Please RSVP here.

The following week, on Thursday, November 12, join me in celebrating the publication of three delightful new books at Green Apple in the Park. Scott Lambridis and I have been book club buddies for over fifteen years now, and though our readerly tastes are quite different, it’s a huge pleasure to see how some of the older books on our reading list have impacted the world of his debut novel, St. Ulphia’s Dead. Set in a remote village, his book deals with the locals’ beliefs that they are haunted by a cannibalistic spirit, the Wendigo, and medical researchers who arrive to investigate the issue. In our world both grounded in the scientific method and at the same time ruled by irrational behavior, fiction can show how these seemingly opposing impulses feed each other.

Blue poster announcing the event with three books and a moderator.

Yance Wyatt book The Water Smith has been billed as a Southern Gothic, and Martha Conway’s We Meet Apart is a WWII-era story about two sisters who become separated and stranded in parallel universes. I’m still reading these two, but I think we’ll have plenty of weird science to talk about.

Green Apple in the Park, November 12, 7 pm. Don’t forget to register and please buy the books!

And if you happen to be in Southern California this weekend, don’t miss Santa Monica Review’s issue release party this Sunday with Dylan Landis, Monona Wali, and many amazing others! Thanks to the editor Andrew Tonkovich who appreciates my sense of humor, I have a story in this issue. More on this once in a following newsletter (once I receive the copy of the magazine.)

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.

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

On By Olga ZilberbourgIn book, EventLeave a comment

Olga Zilberbourg's avatarPunctured Lines

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, 540 Valencia St. 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…

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Review of Vesna Maric’s The President Shop

On By Olga ZilberbourgIn book, Book review, Prose review, Publication, Wonderful BooksLeave a comment

I’m happy to have written a book review for a new, to me, venue, a magazine called On the Premises, edited and published by the poet Ron Slate.

Vesna Maric emigrated to the UK in 1992, a refugee from Bosnia. A township in northern England funded her transportation. Sixteen at the time, having barely recovered from the shock of experiencing the first six months of the war, she enrolled in school where she soon recognized that “Yugoslavia had been a totalitarian state, that we had been indoctrinated, brainwashed, unfree, undemocratic” – unlike her new British neighbors who were “free of indoctrination” and democratic in practice. As she writes in an essay published in Granta, “The Fascist Within,” this information conflicted with the education she had received in Mostar where she had been a Pioneer and had been taught to regard England as a colonizing capitalist empire that teaches its citizens to value property over human life. How then to reconcile the two incompatible doctrines? What impressions of one’s world remain after we accept that the political history of any country, no matter how democratic it thinks of itself, is mainly a self-justifying lie?

https://www.ronslate.com/on-the-president-shop-a-novel-by-vesna-maric/

Please enjoy the review, and do buy the book!

Conversations Between Friends: Nancy Au and Olga Zilberbourg

On By Olga ZilberbourgIn book, interview, Like WaterLeave a comment

At the beginning of October, 2019, Nancy Au and Olga Zilberbourg celebrated the publication of their books Spider Love Song and Other Stories and Like Water and Other Stories. The E.M. Wolfman General Interest Small Bookstore of Oakland, CA, generously hosted their conversation. Nancy grew up in San Francisco and writes about three generations of Chinese-American families. Olga grew up in the Soviet Union and Russia and immigrated to the United States, where she landed in San Francisco. Each of their story collections center on immigrant relationships and complex family dynamics. Following up on their in-person conversation, the authors unpacked their lived experiences and approaches to craft in the email exchange documented here.

Read this conversation in CRAFT magazine.

Video from my reading for BunkerLit

On By Olga ZilberbourgIn book, Like Water, ReadingsLeave a comment

Back in May, I read from my book and answered some questions for a new, Zoom-based reading series called BunkerLit. It was a fun event and the organizers posted the video right away, but things were hectic then (let’s face it, they are still hectic six months later), and I forgot to share this link here. Check it out. I’m hugely grateful to Brendan Isaac Jones and Amy Butcher for inviting me and for everyone who attended!

A review of LIKE WATER in Necessary Fiction

On By Olga ZilberbourgIn book, Book review, Like WaterLeave a comment

Thank you Jaye Viner for reviewing my book in Necessary Fiction!

For many Americans, the fall of the Soviet Union in December of 1991 has faded into history. It is of the past, removed, something that makes for good television. At most, it is an event of international importance, something that happened “over there.” This is less true for Americans who were born in the USSR such as author Olga Zilberbourg, whose first book of English-language short stories, Like Water and Other Stories, was released last fall. For Zilberbourg, 1992, the year after the fall, is a milestone year around which many of her stories revolve. It acts as an invisible undercurrent weaving through the collection.

http://necessaryfiction.com/reviews/LikeWaterandOtherStories

My book is available from WTAW Press in paperback and ebook formats.

Two stories, Companionship and Practice Relaxing Bedtime Ritual, on YouTube

On By Olga ZilberbourgIn book, Like Water, short storyLeave a comment

I uploaded two stories from my book, Companionship and Practice a Relaxing Bedtime Ritual to YouTube as a part of Annie Kim’s Way Off-Site virtual reading event to bring together people who decided not to go to AWP20 writers conference. Missing the conference was sad, and this turned out to be a really fun exercise.

A couple of reminders:

My book’s available for sale at WTAW Press

All the Way Off-Site readings can be found on Annie Kim’s YouTube Channel