Ekaterina Derysheva is a displaced poet from Kharkiv, born in 1994 in Melitopol, Ukraine. Her poems have been published in journals such as Circulo de Poesia, Plume, Zerkalo, Tlen Literacki, Literaturportal Bayern, Wizie, Volga, and others. She is the author of the books Точка отсчета (“Starting Point”; 2018) and инсталляции не будет (“There Will Be No Installation”; 2023), and the co-author of the book Insulua Timpului (“Earth Time”; Romania, 2020). Her poems and essays have been translated into 11 languages. She has received fellowships from Villa Concordia, Literary Colloquium Berlin, University of Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. She currently lives in the United States.
Kevin M. F. Platt and various translators translated these poems by Ekaterina Derysheva.
Kevin M. F. Platt is Professor of Russian and East European studies and comparative literature and literary theory at the University of Pennsylvania. His scholarly work focuses on Russian and East European history, culture, poetry, and fiction. He is author or editor of a number of scholarly books, including Terror and Greatness: Ivan and Peter as Russian Myths (Cornell, 2011), Global Russian Cultures (Wisconsin, 2020), and, most recently, Border Conditions: Russian-Speaking Latvians Between World Orders (Cornell/NIUP, 2024). His translations of Russian and Latvian poetry have appeared in World Literature Today, Jacket2, Fence, and other journals. He is the founder and organizer of the poetry translation symposium Your Language My Ear. His current project is entitled Cultural Arbitrage in the Age of Three Worlds.
Ryan Hardy is a translator, language educator, student organizer, and recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where he focused on Russian and Eastern European studies. He has held various writing and editing positions for the School of Russian and Asian Studies, Pomona College’s Vestnik, and DoubleSpeak Magazine. Ryan’s research interests lie at the intersections of historical memory, identity-based conflict, and countercultural movements in Central/Eastern Europe and Eurasia. Most recently, Ryan’s work has focused on collective memory of the Czechoslovak-founded Interhelpo labor cooperative in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Ryan translates across genres, ranging from poetry and prose to memoir and articles from Russian civil society.
Andrew Janco co-translated A Man Only Needs a Room, a volume of Vladimir Gandelsman's poetry (New Meridian Arts Books, 2023), and Today is a Different War by the Ukrainian poet Lyudmyla Khersonska (Arrowsmith Press, 2023). His translations are published in The New York Times, Ploughshares, and other journals, and are included in the anthology Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine.
Asher Maria (he/they) is a PhD student in the program for comparative literature & literary theory at the University of Pennsylvania. He translates from Lithuanian, Portuguese, and Russian, and his research looks at identity formation in Eastern European and Russian migrant communities in Brazil. Ash also received a BA in anthropology, and Russian and Eastern European studies from Pomona College.
Olga Livshin’s poetry and translations appear in the New York Times, Ploughshares, the Kenyon Review, and other journals. She is the author of A Life Replaced (Poets & Traitors Press, 2019). Livshin cotranslated A Man Only Needs a Room (New Meridian Arts, 2022), a volume of Vladimir Gandelsman's poetry, and Today is a Different War (Arrowsmith Press, 2023) by the Ukrainian poet Lyudmyla Khersonska.
