Description
Poetry. Translated from the Russian by Genya Turovskaya and Stephanie Sandler. THE RUSSIAN VERSION is a collection of poems that spans Russia's post-Soviet era. Acclaimed journalist and poet, Elena Fanailova tells stories about the various social layers of a stratified and conflicted nation, reclaiming the poet's role as social critic, while scrutinizing her own position as citizen and poet. Fanailova's political lyricism casts personal pain into the net of historical suffering.
THE RUSSIAN VERSION received the 2010 Best Translated Book Award for Poetry from Three Percent. In her citation for the award, Idra Novey, chair of the BTBA panel for poetry wrote: "THE RUSSIAN VERSION obliterates the stereotype of what Great Russian Poetry should sound like. Fanailova has the candor and compassion of Akhmatova and a gift for striking metaphor that might bring Mandelstam to mind. She is also ruthlessly quick to fire 'from the hip,' as she says in the title poem, and her aim is impeccable."
THE RUSSIAN VERSION includes an introduction by Russian poet and critic Aleksandr Skidan. The 2019 second edition of THE RUSSIAN VERSION (first published by UDP in 2009) includes a more recent long poem, 'Lena and Lena.'
Author Bio
Elena Fanailova is the author of eight books of poetry. Her poems have been translated into ten languages; in English translation they have been anthologized in Contemporary Russian Poetry (Dalkey Archive, 2008), The Anthology of Contemporary Russian Women Poets (University of Iowa Press, 2005), and Crossing Centuries: the New Generation of Russian Poetry (Talisman House, 2000). She has received the Andrei Bely Award (1999), the Moscow Score Award (2003), and the Znamya award (2008). In 2013, she was awarded a fellowship in Rome by Joseph Brodsky Memorial Fund. A book in Italian translation, Lena and the People, was published in Rome in 2015, translated and edited by Claudia Skandura. THE RUSSIAN VERSION (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2009/2019), her first book in English translation, received the 2010 Best Translated Book Award from Three Percent. Born in Voronezh, in central Russia, Fanailova majored in linguistics at Voronezh State University and studied medicine at the Voronezh Medical Institute. She has worked as a doctor, a university professor, and a journalist. At Radio Liberty, Fanailova was the host of the radio program Far from Moscow where she covered a broad range of topics, from the Beslan siege to new Russian prose. In recent years, her journalism has been focused on Central Europe and the Balkans. From 2012 to 2018 she traveled extensively in Ukraine interviewing Ukrainian intellectuals for Radio Liberty. She lives in Moscow.
Author City: MOSCOW RUS
Genya Turovskaya is the author of several chapbooks: CALENDAR (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2002), THE TIDES (Octopus Books, 2007), Dear Jenny (SUPERMACHINE 2011), and NEW YEAR'S EVE (Octopus, 2011). Her poetry and translations of contemporary Russian poets have appeared in Chicago Review, Conjunctions, A Public Space, Octopus, jubilat, and other publications. She is the translator of Aleksandr Skidan's RED SHIFTING (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2008), and with Stephanie Sandler is the translator of THE RUSSIAN VERSION (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2019) by Elena Falainova, winner of the 2010 Best Translated Book Award for Poetry by Three Percent. She has been the recipient of various awards and fellowships including a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, a Montana Artist Refuge Fellowship, the Witter Bynner Translation Residency at Santa Fe Art Institute, and a Fund for Poetry grant. She holds an MFA from Bard College and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Author City: NEW YORK, NY USA
Stephanie Sandler is Ernest E. Monrad Professor and Chair of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University, where she also co-chairs the Rethinking Translation Seminar at the Mahindra Humanities Center. She is a co-author of A History of Russian Literature (Oxford). Her translations of Elena Shvarts, Alexandra Petrova, Mara Malanova, Fedor Svarovsky, and other contemporary Russian poets have appeared in anthologies and journals, and she was a translator and co-editor of Olga Sedakova, In Praise of Poetry (Open Letter).
Author City: NEW YORK, NY USA
Aleksandr Skidan, born in Leningrad in 1965, has published five poetry collections in Russian, one of which was awarded the 2006 Andrei Bely Prize. An award-winning essayist, Skidan has published four books of essays (Critical Mass, The Resistance to/of Poetry, Summation of a Poetics, and Theses Toward the Politicization of Art and Other Texts), as well as a novel. He translates American and European literary theory and American poetry. He is a member of the art and activist collective Chto Delat'? and a co-editor of the New Literary Observer. His first book in English translation, RED SHIFTING, was published in 2008 by Ugly Duckling Presse. He lives in St. Petersburg.
Author City: MOSCOW RUS