The event celebrates the 80th anniversary of Tomas Venclova, Lithuanian poet and scholar, former Soviet dissident and founding member of the Lithuanian Helsinki Group, professor emeritus of Russian Literature at Yale University. He will read his old and new works in his native Lithuanian with Russian translations by Anna Gerasimova (English translations by multiple authors will be read by a Hunter student Sasha White) and speak about the past and present of Lithuania, its literature, culture and politics.