Since the New York Review of Books was founded in 1963 and throughout the Cold War, the newspaper reviewed English-language translations of “contraband” literature from behind the Iron Curtain and remained one of the most important outlets for authors denied publication at home to be heard in the West. This panel brings together NYRB editor and poet Edwin Frank, graduate students of the Comparative Literature Department, CUNY Graduate Center, and Yasha Klots, director of Tamizdat Project, whose course "Banned Books in Russia and Beyond" has explored, in particular, the NYRBcoverage of "contraband" Russian literature. The panel will look back at the years when tamizdat - literally, “published over there” - took shape as a literary practice and political institution and discuss the vicissitudes of clandestine manuscripts from the USSR on their way from the drawer to the reader abroad.
Edwin Frank is the editor and founder of the New York Review Books Classics series and the author of Snake Train: Poems 1984-2013. He will be joined by Coco Fitterman, Alex Hall, Jonah Howell, Alexander Pau Soria et al. The discussion will be moderated by Yasha Klots.