Flier art by Marc Kompaneyets
Saturday February 25 * 7pm * Masks required for this event * RSVP: Free / donations for presenters welcome * Watch livestream
The 2022 invasion of Ukraine is but the latest act of Russian (Soviet) imperialism, a violence that spans generations and nations. To mark one year since the occupation, we gather to speak out against senseless violence through literature, art and music.
Hear from Armenian, Ukrainian, Russian, Moldovan, Jewish, Syrian, Romani, Greek and American voices and uplift survival in the face of displacement, erasure and genocide.
The event will include presentations of poetry, literary translation, visual art, calligraphy, creative nonfiction, acoustic music and more from migrant cultural workers and their allies. Together we’ll celebrate resilience and resistance and collectively fundraise for Ukraine Trust Chain.
Presenters: Olga Livshin, Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, Matvei Yankelevich, Raffi Joe Wartanian, Oksana Marafioti, Abdulrahman Naanseh
Curator: Tanya Paperny
Ticket sale donations go to presenters; day-of fundraising benefits Ukraine Trust Chain
Rhizome is not an accessible venue due to nearby construction
In-person attendees must wear well-fitting masks
Questions? Contact tpaperny@gmail.com
This event is supported in part by Poets & Writers.
Biographies
Olga Livshin grew up in Odesa, Ukraine, and in Moscow. Her poems, translations, and essays are published in The New York Times, AGNI Online, The Kenyon Review, and other journals. She is the author of A Life Replaced: Poems and Translations from Anna Akhmatova and Vladimir Gandelsman (2019) and the co-translator of A Man Only Needs a Room by Vladimir Gandelsman (2022). She also co-translated a chapbook by the Ukrainian poet Lyudmyla Khersonska, Today Is a Different War, forthcoming in 2023.
Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach (juliakolchinskydasbach.com) emigrated from Dnipro, Ukraine as a Jewish refugee in 1993, when she was six years old. She is the author of three poetry collections: The Many Names for Mother, winner the Wick Poetry Prize (Kent State University Press, 2019), finalist for the Jewish Book Award; Don't Touch the Bones (Lost Horse Press, 2020), winner of the 2019 Idaho Poetry Prize, and 40 WEEKS, forthcoming from YesYes Books in February 2023. Her recent poems have appeared in POETRY, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, and AGNI, among others. She holds an MFA from the University of Oregon and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from the University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation, Lyric Witness: Intergenerational (Re)collection of the Holocaust in Contemporary American Poetry, pays particular attention to the underrepresented atrocity in the former Soviet territories. Julia is the author of the model poem for "Dear Ukraine": A Global Community Poem (dearukrainepoem.com). She is the Murphy Visiting Fellow and Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Hendrix College and lives in Little Rock, Arkansas with her family.
Matvei Yankelevich is a poet, translator, and editor. His books include the poetry collections Some Worlds for Dr. Vogt (Black Square) and Dead Winter (Fonograf), as well as the translations Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings of Daniil Kharms (Overlook) and Alexander Vvedensky's An Invitation for Me to Think (NYRB Poets; with Eugene Ostashevsky), winner of the 2014 National Translation Award. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for Humanities, and Civitella Ranieri. In the 1990s, he co-founded Ugly Duckling Presse where he edited and designed books, periodicals, and ephemera for more than twenty years. As of 2022, he is editor of World Poetry Books, a nonprofit publisher of poetry in translation. He teaches translation at Columbia University's School of the Arts.
Raffi Joe Wartanian is a writer, musician, and educator who teaches writing at UCLA. His essays have appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Outside Magazine, Lapham's Quarterly, The Baltimore Sun, Miami Herald, and is forthcoming in the University of Texas Press anthology “We Are All Armenians.” As a musician, Raffi has released two albums of original music—Critical Distance (2019) and Pushkin Street (2013)—and is currently developing a collection of compositions on the oud.
Jenny Yurshansky is an American artist who was born stateless in Rome by way of Soviet-era Moldova. She received her MFA in Visual Art from UC Irvine and was a postgrad in Critical Studies at the Malmö Art Academy. Her goal is to initiate public discourse through narrative and telling the stories of generations of migrants. Jenny's writing has been published in Jewish Currents, Art Journal Open, and Asylum Arts. Her book "Blacklisted: A Planted Allegory (Recollections)" was published by Pitzer College Art Galleries in 2017. In 2011 with D-Block Projects, Jenny published her first book of fiction, "Mystery of the Secret Room." Her work has been reviewed and selected in 2022 by the Los Angeles Times, Hyperallergic, and Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles. Jenny received a generous grant from the Lighton Travel Fellowship to continue research on her family’s experience of being Jewish refugees from the Soviet Union but had to defer this research first due to the pandemic and now due to the Russian invasion.
Oksana Marafioti is an American writer and activist of Romani, Armenian, Greek, and Ukrainian descent. She aligns strongly with all of her cultures and often explores themes of identity, belonging, and multiculturalism in her writing. Oksana is the author of the bestselling memoir, American Gypsy (FSG, 2012) and the urban fantasy, Donatti’s Lunatics (WRP, 2018). Her works have appeared in Rumpus, Slate, and Time magazines and in a number of literary journals and anthologies. As a guest speaker, she has appeared on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, the American Library Association, C-Span’s Race and Ethnicity in the 21st Century, and more. Oksana was the 2013 BMI - Library of Congress Kluge Center Literary Award recipient and the 2020 recipient of the Picador Guest Professorship Award from the University of Leipzig, Germany. In 2018 Oksana founded Lounge Writers, an online creative writing studio where writers of all levels and genres can stay inspired and hone their craft. Her 2023 book project has been funded by a grant from the Nevada Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is a lapsed, classically-trained pianist and an amateur chef.
Syrian artist Abdulrahman Naanseh (b. 1991) learned Arabic calligraphy with the support of his father, a self-taught calligrapher. Naanseh has excelled in this field with exhibitions at the Arneli Art Gallery during the Beit Misk Festival in Beirut, murals at Damascus University, solo exhibitions in Syria in 2002 and 2005, and national Arabic calligraphy competitions. Naanseh is an Artist Protection Fund Fellow and the 2022 Artist-in-Residence at George Mason University’s School of Art. The Artist Protection Fund (APF) fills a critical unmet need by awarding threatened artists and placing them at welcoming host institutions in safe countries where they can continue their work and plan for their futures. View more of Naanseh’s work on Instagram, @_naanseh