Kapovich Katia

About

Katia Kapovich was born on June 21, 1960, in Chisinau, Republic of Moldova, into a Jewish family. During her youth and adult life in the Soviet Union, she was an active member of a dissident group that produced samizdat, a courageous activity that led to repeated arrests and the inability to publish her works in her home country. Due to these political and cultural obstacles, Kapovich emigrated from the USSR in 1990, initially settling in Israel before moving to the United States in 1992, where she built a remarkable literary career. As a bilingual poet, Kapovich writes in both Russian and English, demonstrating exceptional mastery in both languages. Her poems are characterized by narrative lyrical forms that incorporate elements of mythology and memory, exploring themes of war, displacement, loss, and resilience. In English, she has published significant collections such as *Gogol in Rome* (2004), which was shortlisted for the Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, and *Cossacks and Bandits* (2008). Her works have appeared in prestigious publications like the *London Review of Books*, and her poems were included in editor Billy Collins' anthology *Poetry 180*, published by Random House in 2003. In 2002, she received the Witter Bynner Fellowship from the U.S. Library of Congress, a significant recognition of her contribution to American literature. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Kapovich has had a significant academic and cultural presence in the United States, serving as poet-in-residence at Amherst College. She co-edits, with her husband Philip Nikolayev, the annual journal *Fulcrum: An Annual of Poetry and Aesthetics*, which promotes contemporary poetic creation and aesthetic studies. In addition to her work in English, Kapovich has published ten collections of poetry in Russian, solidifying her status as an important voice in Russian diaspora literature. In 2021, a selection of her poetic opus, titled *Selected Poems: The City of the Sky*, was published in Moscow, and in 2019 she received the Hemingway Award for a collection of short stories, a testament to the international recognition of her literary talent and dedication.