CEERES of Voices: Olga Livshin - "A Life Replaced"
"A Life Replaced is a true literary hybrid, a book-conversation in which Livshin’s original poetry and her translations call to one another, blurring the borders between centuries, countries, and languages. Daring and tender, unapologetically political and deeply personal, it is a timely reminder of what it means to be an immigrant."—Ellen Litman
Olga Livshin discusses A Life Replaced: Poems with Translations from Anna Akhmatova and Vladimir Gandelsman. She will be joined in conversation by Eleonor Gilburd. A Q&A and signing will follow the discussion.
Presented in partnership with CEERES, the Center for East European and Russian/Eurasian Studies at the University of Chicago.
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About the book: Russian-American poet Olga Livshin presents her original poetry alongside her translations of Russian poetry by Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) and Vladimir Gandelsman (b.1948), with a foreword by Ilya Kaminsky. Of A Life Replaced, Maggie Smith writes, "Olga Livshin has braided her own poems with her superb translations of Akhmatova and Gandelsman, poets she describes as 'ecstatic voices.' Livshin's voice, too, is ecstatic—and unflinching, and loving, and full of earned wisdom. In poem after poem, Livshin, who immigrated to the US from Russia as a child, acknowledges the two Americas she knows firsthand: the one that fears and demonizes, and the one that welcomes. A Life Replaced is astonishingly beautiful, intelligent, and important."
About the author: Olga Livshin grew up in Odessa and Moscow, and came to the United States with her family as a teenager. She holds a PhD is in Slavic Languages and Literature and taught Russian language and literature at the university level full time before switching to teaching teenagers world literature and creative writing. Her poems, translations, and essays are published in The Kenyon Review, Poetry International, Mad Hatters' Review, and other journals. Her work has been recognized by the CALYX Journal's Lois Cranston Memorial Prize, the Gabo Prize for Literature in Translation, the Cambridge Sidewalk Poetry Project, and Poets & Patrons Chicagoland Competition. The poet and filmmaker Mohsen Emadi has translated her work into Persian and included it in The Persian Anthology of World Poetry. She lives outside Philadelphia.
About the interlocutor: Eleonory Gilburd is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Chicago.
Related Titles
Original poetry by Russian-American poet Olga Livshin, alongside her translations of Russian poetry by Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) and Vladimir Gandelsman (b.1948). Foreword by Ilya Kaminsky. "A Life Replaced" is the fourth book from Poets & Traitors Press.