Special Visitors 2009

Eavan Boland, this year’s Ida Beam distinguished  Visiting Professor,  is universally acknowledged as the preeminent female poet and contemporary writer of her native Ireland. She has published nine volumes of poetry, including Domestic Violence (2007) and New Collected Poems (2008), both with W.W. Norton. Her awards include the Lannan Foundation Award in Poetry and an American Ireland Fund Literary Award. She is on the board of the Irish Arts Council, a member of the Irish Academy of Letters and on the advisory board of the International Writers Center at Washington University. She lives in Stanford, California, where she is professor of English at Stanford University and director of the creative writing program.

Kyoko YOSHIDA (fiction and nonfiction writer, translator; b.1969, Japan) earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The title story of her dissertation, "Kyoto Panorama Project," was published in The Massachusetts Review. Other publications in American journals include “Chick Sexing School,” “Movie Dog,” and “Between the Imperial Garden and Temple Street.” She lectures on topics in American literature, and is currently Assistant Professor of English at Keio University in Tokyo. She participates courtesy of Keio University.

Maxim Amelin is a poet, currently living in Moscow, where he is Editor-in-Chief at OGI and B.S.G. Presses.  He was born in 1970 in the city of Kursk in Western Russia, studied at the Gorky Literary Institute in Saint Petersburg, and for fourteen years was the director of Symposium Press in that city.   His poetry has been published in a wide array of Russian literary journals, from Novy Mir to Znamya, and anthologized in literary collections.  He is the author of three books of poetry, Cold Odes (Kholodniye Odi, 1996), Dubia (1999), and The Horse of Gorgon (Kon Gorgoni, 2003).  His poems have been translated into English, Hungarian, Vietnamese, Georgian, Italian, Chinese, Latvian, German, Polish, Portuguese, and French.  He is the author of numerous articles and essays about poets and poetry, and has compiled several poetry anthologies.  Amelin has received numerous literary awards, including the prestigious Moscow Count Prize (Moskovsky Shyot) in 2003.  He is a member of the Russian PEN Center and the Guild of Literary Translators. In the U.S., Amelin’s poetry is included in Crossing Centuries: The New Generation in Russian Poetry (Talisman House Publishers, 2000.)    Selection from work

Ekaterina Boyarskikh is a poet, prose-writer, and scholar.  She was born in 1975 in Irkutsk. Currently, she is a research fellow at the Russian Language and Literature Department of Irkutsk State University.  She is the author of one book of poetry, Dagaz (OGI Press, 2005).  Her work has appeared in journals collections, and anthologies, and she has contributed to numerous online literary publications.  She was awarded the Debut Prize for Poetry in 2000.  She is an author of poems, short prose, children’s poetry and fairytales, and a translator of poetry. Boyarskikh’s writing has been translated into English, French, and Ukrainian.  She is a nominator and jury member for the LiteratuRRentgen Prize, for which she recommends and considers the work of young poets under 25 living outside of Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Boyarskikh’s poetry is included in An Anthology of Contemporary Russian Women Poets (University of Iowa Press, 2005).   Selection from Work

Natalia Klyuchareva, a poet and prose-writer, was born in 1981 in Perm.  She lives and works in Moscow, where she is a journalist with First of September, a newspaper, and a frequent contributor to the literary journal Novy Mir.  She was recognized as a promising young writer in 2002, when she was shortlisted for the Debut Prize for Poetry.  In 2006 she published her first book of poems, White Pioneers (ARGO-Risk Press).  Her novel, A Train Named Russia(Rossiya: Obshy Vagon), was published in Novy Mir (No. 1, 2006), and was nominated for the National Bestseller Prize.  It was subsequently published as an independent volume (Limbus Press, 2007), and has been translated into five languages.  Her story, A Year in Paradise, which appeared in Novy Mir (No 11, 2007), received the 2007 Yury Kazakov Prize and the Eureka Prize. Kluchareva is one of the authors featured in Rasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia (forthcoming in the U.S. from Tin House Books in September 2009). Selection from work

Oleg Zobern was born in 1980 in Moscow.  He graduated form the Gorky Literary Institute.  His stories have been published in Novy Mir, Russian Esquire, Oktyabr, Znamya, and other Russian and international literary periodicals, and in various collections.  He was awarded the Debut prize in 2004.  His book Quiet Jericho (Tikhii Yericho) was published in Dutch (Douane) in 2007, and shortly after in Russian (Vargus).  In 2008 a volume of his short stories, A Funeral Feast for Yana Volkers (Trizna po Yanu Volkersu) was published in Dutch.  Since 2008 he has been an assistant professor of creative writhing at the Gorky Institute.  Since 2009 he hasn’t denied himself any indulgences, and lives for his own enjoyment. Zobern’s prose has also been included in Rasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia (forthcoming in the U.S. from Tin House Books in September 2009).  Selection from work