The SLASH series 8 / Journalists. An evening of poetry and reflection.

Does it really matter what a poet does besides writing, how he/she earns a living. Do poets working in the same field have anything in common? Poets/teachers, poets/architects… Our series is about the word to the right of the slash. On April 29, the word is “journalists”.

Boris Paramonov is a Russian-born essayist whose work focuses on cultural and philosophical questions. He  writes and speaks on a broad assortment of subjects related to Russian history, literature, and philosophy. In the 1980s, he began working for Radio Liberty, where he has written for the station’s Web site, served as a commentator, and hosted the program “Russian Questions.” Paramonov won the 2005 Pushkin Prize from the Alfred Toepfer Fund, recognizing his decades of writing essays for diverse media, from “thick” Russian journals to slender Russian newspapers and the ethereal Internet. Several collections of Paramonov’s essays have been published in book form. (ReadRussia)

Katia Kapovich is the author of eight Russian collections and of two volumes of English verse, Gogol in Rome (Salt, 2004, shortlisted for England’s 2005 Jerwood Alderburgh Prize) and Cossacks and Bandits (Salt, 2008). Her English language poetry has appeared in the London Review of Books, Poetry, The New Republic, Harvard Review, The Independent, The Common, Jacket, Plume and numerous other periodicals, as well as in several anthologies including Best American Poetry 2007 and Poetry 180 (Random House, Billy Collins, Ed.)  Katia Kapovich, the recipient of the 2001 Witter Bynner Fellowship from the U.S. Library of Congress, and a poet-in-residence at Amherst College in 2007, lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she co-edits the respected annual Fulcrum with her husband Philip Nikolayev. She is the recipient of the 2013 Russian Prize in the category “Short Fiction”.

http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poet/item/15895/Katia-Kapovich

Philip Nikolayev’s new collection of poetry, Letters from Aldenderry, came out from Salt in the fall of 2006. His previous volume of poems, Monkey Time, won the 2001 Verse Prize and was published by Verse Press in 2003. He co-edits the award-winning Fulcrum: an annual of poetry and aesthetics. His writing have also appeared in such journals as Poetry, The Paris Review, Grand Street, Harvard Review, The Boston Globe, Verse, and many others across the English-speaking world, and are anthologized in 180 More Extraordinary Poems for Every Day (Random House, 2005).

Alexei Tsvetkov grew up in Zaporizhia and briefly studied chemistry at the Odessa University, then history (1965–1968) and journalism (1971–1974) at the Moscow State University. Together with S.Gandlevsky, B.Kenjeev, and A. Soprovsky he founded the unofficial group of poets Moscow Time. In 1975 he was arrested and deported from Moscow and in the same year emigrated to the United States. He edited the emigre newspaper Russkaya Zhizn (San Francisco, 1976–77); worked as an international broadcaster at the Voice of America radio station; from 1989 until 2007 worked in the same capacity at the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, first in Munich, later in Prague. Currently he is a freelance writer based in New York City. In 2007 he was awarded Andrei Bely prize for poetry.

The Russian American Cultural Center (RACC) provides permanent cultural representation to the more than 700,000 Russian-speaking residents in the New York City Metropolitan area. In addition to supporting cultural awareness and understanding of Russian-American emerging artists, Russian history and culture, the Russian American Cultural Center (RACC) aims to promote cultural exchange and cultural diversity among all of New York City’s cultural communities through shared experiences and mutual values. The Russian American Cultural Center (RACC) is a place where New York’s Russian-speaking immigrants may become culturally integrated into mainstream America, and where the American public may become more culturally aware and educated about Russian culture, history and art.

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Founded in 2005 by poet Oleg Woolf (1954-2011), the  StoSvet project (http://stosvet.net/) includes the Cardinal Points Literary Journal , the English language periodical with the emphasis on Russian culture and the art of translation; the Russian version of the journal (“Стороны Света/Storony Sveta”), the Stosvet Press publishing house, and the Compass Translation Award.