Please join us for an evening with Maria Stepanova, a Berlin-based Russian poet and prose writer, recipient of multiple book awards, including the Andrei Bely Prize, Joseph Brodsky Fellowship, the Big Book Prize, and NOS, among others, and editor-in-chief of Colta.ru, an online cultural portal currently blocked in Russia. Stepanova's novel In Memory of Memory, translated into English by Sasha Dugdale (New Directions, 2021), was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. Her newest novel Fokus is forthcoming in English next year. Stepanova will read her original works and speak about living and writing in exile.
She will be joined by Sasha Dugdale, her English translator and a poet, whose own book Deformations (2020) was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot and Derek Walcott Prizes. Dugdale is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the author of six collections of poetry, including The Strongbox (Carcanet, 2024). She has translated other Russian-language women poets, including Elena Shvarts and Marina Tsvetaeva, as well as new writing for theaters in the UK and the US, e.g. the New York Public Theatre, the UK's Royal Court Theatre, and Royal Shakespeare Company.
Stepanova's most recent book of poetry in English Holy Winter 20/21 (New Directions, 2024), translated by Sasha Dugdale, will be the subject of a symposium at the Harriman Institute of Columbia University on November 18!