Irina Mashinski, curator

Irina Mashinski, the Curator of a number of RACC literary series, was born and raised in Moscow. She graduated from Moscow University summa cum laude and completed her PhD in paleoclimatology. In 1991, she emigrated to the United States, where she taught mathematics at high school and Russian culture and history at several universities. She is the author of eleven books of poetry and essays in Russian and the co-editor, with Robert Chandler and Boris Dralyuk, of The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry (2015) and of the Cardinal Points Journal (Brown University). Irina Mashinski is the recipient of several Russian literary awards, and, with Boris Dralyuk, of the 2012 Joseph Brodsky/Stephen Spender Translation Prize. As the editor-in-chief of the StoSvet literary project, Mashinski has collaborated with RACC on several literary series, such as SLASH, StoSvet Compass Translation Award, and other programs.

In the RACC 2022 literary program, Irina Mashinski presented a new series: "The Art of Translation. Dialogues". Her conversations with Dmitry Manin, Mary Jane White, Peter Daniels, and Lars Kleberg posted on YouTube as part of the RACC’s nine annual literary events have immediately attracted hundreds of viewers. Mashinski's series of dialogues with top English-Russian literary translators and scholars constitutes an important contribution to the field; when completed, the series  is planned to be published as a book.