Award-Winning Russian Authors to Visit UNC-Chapel Hill
 Visit Includes Public Events: Panel Discussion Sept. 23, Reading at UNC-Greensboro Sept. 24, Reading at Market Street Books in Chapel Hill Sept. 25
Time: September 17-26, 2008
Location: Varies with different events
Four acclaimed Russian writers will be the guests of the Slavic Languages and Literatures Department at UNC-Chapel Hill September 17-26 as part of a program to encourage cross-cultural communication through the arts. The writers, representing the diversity of contemporary Russian literature, include Dina Gatina, a poet, prose-writer, and graphic artist, Gennady Kanevskiy, known for his rhythmic spoken word poetry, Ilya Kukulin, a prominent literary critic and poet, and Nikolai Zvyagintsev, author of four books of lyrical poetry (please see profiles below).
This is the FIFTH year that UNC's Slavic Department has helped sponsor this exchange and, as many of you know, the events with the Russian writers now have a favored spot on the fall cultural calendars of many of us in Chapel Hill.
A highlight of the ten-day residency will be a series of public events, bringing the work of these authors to the local community. There will be three opportunities for the public to meet the writers.
Tuesday, September 23, 5:00pm, Panel discussion: “What It Means to Be a Writer in Today’s Russia”
LOCATION: University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Campus: Dey Hall Fourth Floor Toy Lounge
The writers will discuss issues about the contemporary Russian literary scene and answer questions from audience in a round-table format.
Wednesday, September 24, 7:30pm: Poetry Reading
LOCATION: University of North Carolina-Greensboro Campus: Center for Creative Writing in the Arts Faculty Center
OW participants read from their work in Russian, with English translations read in succession.
Thursday, September 25, 7:00pm: Poetry Reading
LOCATION: Market Street Books/Arts & Letters Community Center
610 Market Street, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
***OW participants read from their work in Russian, with English translations read in succession.***
The writers will visit North Carolina as part of the Open World Cultural Leaders Program supported by The Open World Leadership Center at the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Arts and facilitated by CEC ArtsLink, a New York City-based nonprofit organization.
This will be the first trip to the United States for many of the writers, and an exciting opportunity to connect with colleagues and contemporaries in this country, and to share their viewpoints with an American audience. This is the fifth year that the UNC- Chapel Hill Department of Slavic Languages and Literature will host a group of Open World writers.
Dmitri Bykov, who participated in the program in 2005, recalled, “Three weeks of this program helped me understand America better than living in the country for years would have.”
This sentiment is very much in line with the goals to Open World Program, which seeks to create “citizen diplomats,” and those of CEC ArtsLink, organized around the belief that, “the arts are a society’s most deliberate and complex means of communication, and that artists and arts administrators can help nations overcome long histories of reciprocal distrust, insularity and conflict.”
Following their stay in North Carolina, the writers will travel to Washington, DC, where they will attend the National Book Festival, give a special reading of their work at the National Endowment for the Arts, and give public reading at Bridge Street Books in Georgetown.
The writers’ visit is part of a professional exchange program sponsored by the Open World Leadership Center at the Library of Congress. Open World is a unique, nonpartisan initiative of the U.S. Congress. Open World’s Cultural Leaders Program aims to forge better understanding between the United States and Russia by enabling emerging Russian leaders in the arts to experience America’s cultural and community life, and to work with their American counterparts. Over 13,000 Open World participants have been hosted in all 50 U.S. states since the program's inception in 1999. Support for the cultural program is provided through partnership and funding from the National Endowment for the Arts; the Open World Leadership Center funds the administrative portion of the program.
CEC ArtsLink, through a multi-faceted program of cultural exchange, serves to create and sustain constructive, mutually beneficial relationships in the arts between the United States and Eastern and Central Europe, Russia, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. Working with artists, arts organizations and community-based groups, CEC ArtsLink provides an essential structure for ongoing dialogue, contributing to a culture of openness and trust between nations.
For more information and to arrange interviews with the Russian writers during their stay in North Carolina, please contact Prof. Christopher Putney, Chair, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, UNC-Chapel Hill at (919) 962-7548 or crputney@email.unc.edu. For more background on Open World, please visit www.openworld.gov. To learn more about opportunities for artists and arts organizations administered by CEC Artslink, please visit www.cecartslink.org.
Writer Profiles:
*Dina Gatina is a poet, prose writer, and graphic artist. She is the author of a book of poetry, /On the Mound /[/Po Kochkam/, 2005]. Her poems have been translated into French, Italian and Ukrainian, and her drawings have been shown in Russia and abroad. She writes, I was born in the city of Engels, and studied graphic design at the Bogolyubov Saratov Arts College, and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Moscow. I would have liked to become a painter, enter a monastery, or rescue endangered species but unfortunately, none of these options worked out, and now they no longer make sense. Then, unexpectedly, in 2001 I made the poetry shortlist for The Debut Prize, a national literary award, and in the following year, I won the short prose category for my collections of short stories, /Attractions /[/Attraktsiony/] and /The Hot Countries /[/Zharkiye Strany/]/. /Since then I have regularly published in various journals, and my presentation style made me a popular guest at international and local literary festivals. I became one of the curators of a Spoken Word Festival that has taken place for two year during the Moscow Poetry Biennial./
*Gennady Kanevskiy is a poet. He was born in Moscow in 1965, and graduated from the Moscow Institute of Radio-engineering Electronics and Animation as a medical electronics engineer. He has worked as an engineer, an electronics salesman, a brand manager, and, today, as the editor of the trade journal “Electronics News” [/Novosti Elektroniki/].
Kanevsky’s poetry has been published in Russian literary magazines, as well as/ New Land/ (Denmark) and /SHO/ (Ukraine). He is the author of three books of poetry: /Provincial Latin /[/Provintsialnaya Latyn/, 2000], The World Through Brail [/Mir po Brailu/, 2004], /As if it was/ [/Kak yesli by/, 2006]; his work is included in the collected volumes /Other Possibilities/ [/Drugiye Vozmozhnosti/, 2004] and /Abzatz/ [2007]. His fourth book has just gone to print. He is a regular at Russian literary festivals and poetry slams (where he performs with the poet Anna Russ). Translations of work are included in the anthology/ Contemporary Russian Poetry /[Bunimovich, Kates, eds. Dalkey Archive Press, 2008].
*Ilya Kukulin is a literary critic, poet, and a linguistic scholar.
He was born in 1969 and graduated from Moscow State University with a degree in psychology and pursued an advanced degree in Language and Literature at Russian State University for the Humanities writing a dissertation on the work of Daniil Kharms. He is the editor of the online literary journal /TextOnly/, and the book series /New Poetry/ [/Novaya Poezia/] from New Literary Observer [/Novoye Literaturnoye Obozreniye/] Press. He has worked as a school teacher and guest lecturer at the Russian State University for the Humanities, and contributed to the radio station “Echo of Moscow” and the Radio Russia program on literature, “Our Literary Museum.” In 2002, he was awarded a grant from the Academy of Russian Contemporary Language Arts for young writers.
Since 1997, he has been a frequent jury member for literary prizes around Russia.
Kukulin’s poems have been widely published in Russian magazines and literary journals, as well as in the collections Vavilon and Outskirts [/Okrestnosti/], the anthology /In Black and White/ [/Chernym po Byelomu/], and translated to Albanian, Georgian, and Italian; his prose has been published in the anthology /Very Short Texts/ (/Ochen Korotkiye Teksti/); and his articles have appeared in the journals /New Literary Observer/, /Znamya, Novii Mir/, /Russian Literature/ (/Russkaya Literatura/), and others. He frequently publishes articles about Russian poets of the 20th Century (Marina Tsvetaeva, Boris Pasternak), and about Russian memoir-writing.
*Nikolai Zvyagintsev is a poet. His work has been published widely in Russian journals and anthologies, and he is the author of four books of poems. He writes,
I was born in 1967 near Moscow in the same place on the Gorky Railroad that Benedict Yerofeev writes about in Moscow to the End of the Line.
From early childhood, I lived in Moscow, and following high school I entered the Moscow Institute of Architecture. After two years there, I was called into the Army; I served in a city in the Ukraine—a former Jewish shtetl—where, I came to find out, some things had happened that were identical to the plot of /Schindler’s List/. After the army I finished school, and for several years worked as a restoration architect for historical monuments… Then I changed my profession, and for the past fourteen years, I have been working in advertising. Now, as the senior art-director in a Moscow office of an international ad agency I develop advertising campaigns for large Russian and foreign brands. |
