Reading: Ilya Kaminsky and Sawako Nakayasu

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | Poetry Reading and Books Signing with Ilya Kaminsky and Sawako Nakayasu.

Ilya Kaminsky is the author of two widely acclaimed books of poetry, Deaf Republic (Graywolf, 2019), a finalist for this year’s National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award; and Dancing in Odessa (Tupelo, 2004). He is the co-editor of multiple anthologies, including The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (Ecco, 2010) and A God in the House: Poets Talk About Faith (Tupelo, 2012), and the co-translator, with Jean Valentine, of Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva (Alice James, 2012). Born in the then-Soviet Union, he lost most of his hearing at age four and immigrated to the U.S. with his family as a teenager. He now lives in Atlanta, where he holds the Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech. Deaf Republic was named a New York Times Notable Book, and a Best Book of 2019 by The Washington Post, Times Literary Supplement, The Telegraph, The Guardian, Vanity Fair, and Library Journal.

Sawako Nakayasu is a poet and translator whose books include The Ants (Les Figues, 2014), Texture Notes (Letter Machine, 2010), and the translation of The Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa (Canarium Books, 2015), as well as unconventional translations such as Tatsumi Hijikata’s Costume en Face (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2015), a handwritten notebook of dance notations; and Mouth: Eats Color – Sagawa Chika Translations, Anti-translations, & Originals, a multilingual work of both original and translated poetry. Her translation of Takashi Hiraide’s For the Fighting Spirit of the Walnut (New Directions, 2008) received the 2009 Best Translated Book Award from Three Percent. The recipient of fellowships from the NEA and PEN, she is an assistant professor of literary arts at Brown University.