Punctured Lines

Delighted to see Tatsiana Zamirouskaya back in San Francisco for an event at Globus books next Friday August 22, presenting her new book!

www.facebook.com/events/17067...

ICYMI: Graphic novels by women writers with connections to the former Soviet space

If you are looking for graphic novels by women writers with connections to the former Soviet sphere, @olgaz.bsky.social has some suggestions on @puncturedlines.bsky.social

Into Oblivion by Luisa Muradyan Today is a quiet day and I am stuck checking inventory. The things I don’t want to remember I shove in drawers that no one will open

Honored to have the opening poem from I Make Jokes When I’m Devastated featured at @onlypoemsmag.bsky.social today!

www.onlypoemsdaily.com/p/into-obliv...

Huge thanks to Rachel South from Pushkin House London for help gathering material for this post, and to @yelenafurman.bsky.social for the same, and for editing!

Collage of seven book covers

Today on the blog: A list of graphic memoirs and novels of Soviet trauma, written by women with personal or familial connections to the former USSR.

Y Nayberg, Lena Wolf, @rutasepetys.bsky.social, @verabrosgol.bsky.social, J Aleskeyeva, A Ulinich, H Moisseinen

puncturedlines.com/2025/08/05/g...

ICYMI online, it's now in print (my review of Maya Arad's Happy New Years, with the line about Stanford tuition in the early 90s, which isn't in the review and isn't the only reason to read this book).

Carolyn Gold Heilbrun on Constance Garnett Most readers of Punctured Lines are likely familiar with the name of Constance Garnett –English-language translator from Russian par excellence — and so I’ll begin this post with …

Google reminded me that five years ago I was reading Carolyn Gold Heilbrun's monograph on Constance Garnett. Readers of @puncturedlines.bsky.social might remember this post. I'm continuing to be fascinated less by Russian lit than by the powerful women behind it..

puncturedlines.com/2020/07/07/c...

An image of a magazine cover that shows library shelves in the background and an electric lamp in the foreground. The text reads: AFTER HAPPY HOUR A Journal of Literature and Art and below THE SECOND CHANCE ISSUE REPRINTS FROM DEFUNCT MAGS

An image of text that reads: How to Tell if a Student in Your Beginning Poetry Class Is a Russian Spy by Olga Zilberbourg The first thing you’ll notice about him is that he doesn’t wear a beret or horn-rimmed glasses, like your two other male students. He has a perfectly unremarkable face and something of a beer belly. If he were in better shape, you’d know he’s a spy at first glance. The beer belly makes this man curiously good-looking. He wears baggy jeans and polo shirts to class, because that’s “the American way.” He writes lyric love poetry, he says during the introductory first session. This information makes you groan inwardly because you have a dreadful suspicion his poetry is going to rhyme. The man’s name is Richard Murphy, and he says he is from Massachusetts, but he speaks with a strong Slavic accent. You don’t pry. On an urban university campus in New York you’ve learned to tread carefully around ethnic and national identities. If he really is from Massachusetts and if hi

My story "How to Tell If a Student in Your Beginning Poetry Class Is a Russian Spy" is back online thanks to After Happy Hour Reviews special reprint issue. It first appeared in Mad Hatters' review: Back from the USSR issue in 2011. 1/2

#shortstory #publication #reprint #humor #spyfiction

Yes, @bowlga has made me eager to read this novel by Vesna Maric.
https://www.ronslate.com/on-the-president-shop-a-novel-by-vesna-maric/

How Moscow’s 1957 World Youth Festival Inspired Me to Go On Pretending: Guest Essay by Alina Adams Today we welcome Alina Adams back to the blog with an essay about her interracial family’s trip to Moscow (before the war in Ukraine) and its connection to her recently released novel, Go On …

Alina Adams connects the past to the present in her fiction and nonfiction work. Don't miss her essay on why she decided to set a section of her latest novel GO ON PRETENDING during Khrushchev's 1957 World Youth Festival.

#books #USSR #history

puncturedlines.com/2025/06/11/h...

Petropolis Check out Petropolis - In her stunning debut novel, Anya Ulinich delivers a funny and unforgettable story of a Russian mail-order bride trying to find her place in America. After losing her father, he...

As always, thank you to @olgaz.bsky.social for the editing collaboration.
As mentioned in the introduction to the essay, there exists another novel in which the 1957 Youth Festival plays a role: Anya Ulinich's Petropolis: bookshop.org/p/books/petr...

puncturedlines.com/2025/06/11/h...

How Moscow’s 1957 World Youth Festival Inspired Me to Go On Pretending: Guest Essay by Alina Adams Today we welcome Alina Adams back to the blog with an essay about her interracial family’s trip to Moscow (before the war in Ukraine) and its connection to her recently released novel, Go On …

puncturedlines.com/2025/06/11/h...

ICYMI: New essay by Alina Adams on her new novel Go On Pretending:

"In 1957, an interracial couple – a white-presenting Jewish woman and an African-American man – were precisely the people who could be taken in by the Soviet Union’s claim of a non-racist, non-antisemitic, non-sexist society." 1/

Finally

www.historythroughfiction.com/go-on-preten...

Today on @puncturedlines.bsky.social a new essay by past contributor Alina Adams on her interracial family's trip to Moscow (pre-Ukraine war) and her new novel, Go On Pretending (link in first comment).

Thank you, as always, to @olgaz.bsky.social for the editing support.

A new essay by past contributor Alina Adams on her interracial family's trip to Moscow (pre-Ukraine war) and her new novel, Go On Pretending: www.historythroughfiction.com/go-on-preten...

As always, thank you to @olgaz.bsky.social for editing support.

How Moscow’s 1957 World Youth Festival Inspired Me to Go On Pretending: Guest Essay by Alina Adams Today we welcome Alina Adams back to the blog with an essay about her interracial family’s trip to Moscow (before the war in Ukraine) and its connection to her recently released novel, Go On …

"Growing up in the Soviet Union [...] I had also heard about the 'children of the rainbow,' those born to one Russian and one African (as well as many other ethnicities) parent after the 1957 World Youth Festival in Moscow, during the reign of Nikita Khrushchev."
puncturedlines.com/2025/06/11/h...

EXCLUSIVE: Governor Newsom ADDRESSES State and Nation LIVE YouTube video by MeidasTouch

"We do not want our streets militarized ... California will never stop fighting ... Do not give in to him."

www.youtube.com/live/0n77NFj...

CHIRLA - The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) was founded in 1986. CHIRLA is a California leader with national impact made of diverse immigrant families and individuals who act as agents of socia...

If want to help but are not in LA, or in LA but unable to get to the protests b/c you're working, say since it's Finals week and your students need to graduate b/c there is no riot, just an authoritarian bully - you can donate here to people who are on the ground.

www.chirla.org?fbclid=IwY2x...

Cover reveal!! 🐇🎀❤️‍🔥 So good to put a name to the heart. So good to put a face to the name. Ty Stillhouse Press for this creepy, frenzied, sour-candy beauty—the book cover of my dreams and best nightmares. TELL ME YOURS, I’LL TELL YOU MINE will be available for preorder starting this Friday 6.6.25!

Your Presence is Mandatory by Sasha Vasilyuk Reviewed by Olga Stein

With Your Presence is Mandatory readers can see what happens when the “common man” protagonist’s realistically rendered war-time experience refutes state-approved narratives of the war

Olga Stein on @sashavasilyuk.bsky.social's book @ @theseaboardreview.ca

www.theseaboardreview.ca/p/your-prese...

A group of books arranged around raffle tickets

A group of books arranged next to a roll of raffle tickets atop a clipboard and with a bookmark

A clipboard and bookmarks labeled "San Francisco Writers Workshop"

Flyer announcing a fundraiser for Noisebridge, hosted by San Francisco Writers Workshop on June 6, at 7 pm, at 272 Capp Street

A strong literary community is an amazing thing. On June 6, help us celebrate San Francisco Writers Workshop and our venue @noisebridge. Here are some items we'll be raffling off, thanks to donations fr Counterpoint Press, @mumblers.bsky.social, @cynthiasaysboo.bsky.social and others!
#readings #SF

Link: anmly.org/ap40/olga-zi...

#poetry #translation #Ukraine #Kyiv

light purple background, at the top of the page is graphic with the magazine logo: ANMLY Olga Zilberbourg translates Olga Bragina Botanical Garden Links to two audio files

Light purple background with the black text of a poem by Olga Bragina in Olga Zilberbourg's translation: t the Botanical garden on Saturday I saw a cute guy and thought I could be walking next to him right now no of course I couldn’t because within me is an anti-matter that turns everything inside out I wouldn’t have known what to talk about wouldn’t have known what on earth I’m doing in this garden well it’s so pretty here the air is fresh magnolias flowering I should walk I should take pictures I should repeat that we’re alive despite everything and we can love probably though these are all theories this matter has no anti— well I’m already used to riding downtown without hearing the air raid sirens I’m used to hearing the stories Kherson refugees tell at the bus stop I’m used to thinking this is my city could this be my city it’s real it’s not a set constructed for the sake of war

Thank you @anmlymag.bsky.social for publishing five poems by Olga Bragina in my translation. Poems from this cycle were written about 2 years ago, and I only wish they were less relevant today.

Facebook Twitter Email Share Essay How to Care for Our Longest-Living Forced Migrants May 8, 2025 by Olga Zilberbourg Looking up a palm tree's heart

hortly after Donald Trump’s reelection and before his inauguration, writer Lillian Howan told me that she was putting aside her other projects to travel to Washington, DC, to visit the United States Botanic Garden where the plants collected by the United States Exploring Expedition (1838–42) were kept. Howan, whose roots are in Tahiti, was finishing her second novel set in the Hakka Chinese community in Tahiti and California, and, researching a new story, she wanted to see the cycad plants that had been uprooted from the Pacific islands and installed in Washington, DC, the oldest living forced migrants to this country. A week after that conversation, writer Monya Baker shared with me a short story written in 1879 by Vsevold Garshin, “Attalea Princeps” or, in my translation, “A Captive Palm.”

Reading List Marília Arnaud, The Book of Affects, trans. Ilze Duarte (Sundial House, 2024) Lillian Howan, The Spellbound (WTAW Press, 2025) and The Charm Buyers (Latitude 20, 2017) D. S. Mirsky, A History of Russian Literature (Knopf, 1927) Simon Parkin, The Forbidden Garden: The Botanists of Besieged Leningrad and Their Impossible Choice (Scribner, 2024)

A Captive Palm (1879) by Vsevold Garshin translated by Olga Zilberbourg In a botanical garden of a large city, there was a stately conservatory made from iron and glass. The building was a thing of beauty: slender, twisted columns held up the structure; upon them rested sleek ornamented arches, webbed together by iron frames enclosing panes of glass. The greenhouse looked particularly fine in the evenings, when the setting sun flooded it with red light and set it ablaze, bright reflections playing and shimmering as though within an enormous, finely polished gem. Inside the thick glass stood the captive plants. As large as the building was, the plants were crowded. Their roots tangled in the struggle for moisture and nutrients. Tree branches collided with long palm fronds and bent and broke them, and themselves pushed against the metal frames and broke. The gardeners constantly trimmed the tree branches and tied the fronds with wire to tame their growth, but this only helped a little. The plants needed wide open spaces, their natural habitats, freedom.

I'm so grateful to @worldlittoday.bsky.social for publishing my translation of Vsevold Garshin's 1879 short story (written 100 years before I was born!), and my accompanying essay on how I came to (re)translate this story.

Read: worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/essay/h...

#fiction #essay #booksky

To quote Derrida, "I say contradictory things that are, we might say, in real tension; they are what construct me, make me live, and will make me die."

I am so grateful to and for everyone who reads this book. 🖤