Liu Endowed Program
February 20, 2024: Eugene Ostashevsky
Eugene Ostashevsky is a poet and translator whose writing is described as “translingual” because of its focus on multilingualism and linguistic interference. His Feeling Sonnets (Carcanet, NYRB Poets, 2022) examine the effects of speaking a non-native language on emotions, parenting, and identity. An earlier book, The Pirate Who Does Not Know the Value of Pi (NYRB Poets, 2017), discusses communication difficulties between pirates and parrots. As translator, Ostashevsky is best known for his editions of the Russian avant-garde, such as OBERIU: An Anthology of Russian Absurdism (Northwestern UP, 2006). His more recent translations include Lucky Breaks by the Ukrainian fiction writer Yevgenia Belorusets (New Directions, 2022). His work has appeared in Best American Poetry and won the National Translation Award, the City of Münster International Poetry Prize, and other prizes.
November 11, 2022: Divya Victor
Divya Victor is the author of CURB from Nightboat Books. CURB is the winner of the 2022 PEN America Open Book Award and the winner of the 2022 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. It was also a finalist for the 2022 CLMP Firecracker Award (Poetry). She is also the author of KITH (Fence Books/ Book*hug); Scheingleichheit: Drei Essays(Merve Verlag, trans. Lena Schmidt); NATURAL SUBJECTS (Trembling Pillow), UNSUB (Insert Blanc), THINGS TO DO WITH YOUR MOUTH (Les Figues). Her work has been collected in numerous venues, including BOMB, the New Museum's The Animated Reader, Crux: Journal of Conceptual Writing, The Best American Experimental Writing, POETRY, The Yale Review, American Poetry Review, and boundary2. Her work has been translated into French, German, Spanish, and Czech. She has been a Mark Diamond Research Fellow at the U.S Holocaust Memorial Museum, a Riverrun Fellow at the Archive for New Poetry at University of California San Diego, and a Writer in Residence at the Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibition (L.A.C.E.). Her work has been performed or installed at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) Los Angeles, The National Gallery of Singapore, the Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibition (L.A.C.E.) and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). She has been an editor at Jacket2 (United States), Ethos Books (Singapore), Invisible Publishing(Canada) and Book*hug Press (Canada). She is currently an Associate Professor of English and Writing at Michigan State University, where she is the Director of the Creative Writing Program.
April 20, 2022: Fayyaz Vellani
Fayyaz Vellani is a British-Canadian writer who has lived in London, New York, and Philadelphia, where he teaches Critical Writing at the University of Pennsylvania. His writing has appeared in The Bookends Review, The F-Word Magazine, and Disability and Society.
