I’m writing to share the latest of my translations to find home in a literary magazine. I’m continuing to translate the work of a Kyiv-based poet Olga Bragina, and this piece appeared in the latest issue of Fence Magazine (#43, Spring-Summer Issue).
I’m sharing the piece here, but please do click through to the magazine and buy an issue or subscribe for a year. Fence takes cool experimental stuff and they take really good care of writers and writing, and supporting a magazine like this contributes immediately to the vibrancy of our literary world.
I want to go to an art show but I think what if they start bombing
the day after tomorrow is the first anniversary of the invasion what if they start bombing
because who knows how many clones of that psychopathic KGB man are bombing us into the ground
because he doesn’t like our country and particularly my city
so what I too often dislike this city when we have traffic jams black ice intercity trains departing at six a.m. I dislike it all life might be more comfortable in any other city of Europe
and no I don’t think the way some do that the Motherland is sick but I love it anyway no I don’t think the Motherland is sick these thoughts belong to a different paradigm
my paradigm are the words of the Kyiv-born Golda Meir “We want to live. Our neighbors want us dead. This doesn’t leave a lot of room for compromise.”
I’m so glad to know that art shows are opening in our city I know they are opening
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.)
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.
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.
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!
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.)
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.)
Friends, one day when we’re all old and gray, please remember to ask me what it takes for a Soviet-born Russian speaker to establish herself not only as a writer of English, but also as a translator into English.
Let me just say that I’m exorbitantly proud of myself for publishing my translations in two more US-based literary magazines. I’m so grateful to the Kyiv-based poet Olga Bragina for trusting me with her work and to the editors of the magazines for seeing what I saw in Olga’s poetry. It is so relatable and so heartbreaking.
Those of you who are writers might be interested to know that WTAW Press has asked me to be one of the jurors for their second annual Kevin McIlvoy Book Prize. If you have an unpublished prose manuscript (novels, memoirs, narrative nonfiction, essay and story collections, and hybrid works), the submissions are open until December 31, 2024. Please submit— I’d love to read your work!
As many of you know, WTAW Press published my collection LIKE WATER AND OTHER STORIES. This book turned 5 years old in September — and it’s not too late to buy it, read, and review on Goodreads and Amazon. All comments are always appreciated. Historically speaking, I haven’t always taken criticism well, but you know, I’m learning, and it’s good for me!
Three more links to this month’s publications:
My review of Shahzoda Samarqandi’s delightfully complex novel Mothersland, written originally in Persian and Tajik and translated to English by Shelley Fairweather-Vega from Russian by Youltan Sadykova. To write this review, I had to study up on the history of Soviet cotton production and the Aral Sea disaster.
On Punctured Lines, the blog that I co-run with Yelena Furman, we had two new pieces this month. First, my Q&A with Sasha Vasilyuk, whose novel about a Soviet WWII soldier with a secret Your Presence is Mandatory I highly recommend. Second, Yelena’s Q&A with Michele A. Berdy, a translator and editor extraordinaire who moved from US to the USSR in the 1970s. Wow, does she have stories to tell!
San Francisco friends: Come next Thursday to Martuni’s on Market Street. It’s a great reading series hosted by a wonderful poet James J. Siegel, and I’m so happy to be invited back. It’s always so much fun! Pro tip: the drinks are really strong.
New publications:
I was delighted to see my translation of a poem by Kyiv-based writer Olga Bragina in Cagibi. I have been experimenting with literary translation in a low-key way for many years, and I am very grateful to Olga for trusting me with her work. Two more poems from this cycle are slated to appear in World Literature Today and five more in Consequence, and I’m hoping to place more elsewhere.
A new fiction of mine, “Untrampled by Horses,” appears in Defenestration. It’s a humor piece. It’s supposed to be funny!
Olga Zilberbourg 