Writer and educator Oksana Vasyakina (joining via Zoom) and translator Elina Alter will read from and discuss WOUND, Vasyakina’s acclaimed first novel. A sensation when it was published in Russia in 2021, WOUND follows a young woman growing up in Siberia and Moscow, gradually unfolding into a consideration of grief, family, the lives of women, lesbian sexuality, and the uses of art. In her introduction to the original edition, Polina Barskova calls the book “Acutely necessary. WOUND is a bold, human, powerful meditation on how a language of love and death takes shape.”
Elina Alter is a writer and the translator of Oksana Vasyakina's Wound. Her translation of Alla Gorbunova's It's the End of the World, My Love was published by Deep Vellum in 2023, and a translation of a short story collection by Gorbunova is forthcoming. She is the editor of Circumference, a journal of translation and international culture.