RUSSIAN LITERATURE WEEK 2015

Read Russia is pleased to announce the launch of RUSSIAN LITERATURE WEEK 2015, the second in an annual series of live and online events and publications every December celebrating & promoting the translation of classic & contemporary Russian literature into English. 

Described more formally as “a celebration of Russian literature in translation featuring distinguished authors, translators, editors, publishers, journalists, filmmakers, broadcasters, & arts, education, and cultural institutions,” RUSSIAN LITERATURE WEEK 2015 will celebrate & promote in particular new translations of Russian literature and new film and online initiatives about Russian literature and book culture from publishers and producers large and small.

RUSSIAN LITERATURE WEEK 2015 will run December 7-11, 2015, and include readings, panel presentations, roundtables, discussions, plus online events & film screenings.  Leading authors, publishers, & translators will preside over our New York City events.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 7

4:00 – 5:30 PM
Eugene Vodolazkin, author, on his new novel LAURUS and his research in Old Russian
NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia
New York University
19 University Place, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10003

Eugene Vodolazkin presents Laurus, his first novel to be translated into English, and talks about the relationship between his personal writing and his work in Old Russian Literature, folklore, and medieval history — two worlds he never thought would collide. He will also discuss why interest in medieval history and literature is experiencing a resurgence. Laurus tells the story of a late-15th-century Russian village healer, devastated by the death of his beloved in childbirth, who embarks on a journey of redemption that brings him face-to-face with a host of eccentric characters and legendary creatures from bizarre medieval bestiaries. The novel won both the Yasnaya Polyana Award and the Big Book Award when it was first published in Russian in 2012, and it has been compared to both Umberto Eco’s writing and The Canterbury Tales.

Co-sponsored by the Institute of Literary Translation

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More Russian Literature is Coming!

On June 27 across Red Square from the Kremlin, Read Russia and Russia's Institute for Literary Translation convened the Editorial Advisory Board of the Russian Library, a new initiative designed to bring 100 to 125 works of Russian literature in top-notch English translations to English-speaking readers around the world.

The editorial meeting brought together distinguished Russian and American publishers, literary scholars, curators, and bibliographers - Vsevolod Bagno, Dmitry Bak, Caryl Emerson, Edward Kasinec, Irina Prokhorova, Alexander Livergant, Stephanie Sandler, Vladimir Tolstoy, and others - to discuss Russian works of literature meriting inclusion in the Russian Library over the next ten years. The Russian Library will be published in hardcover, paperback, and electronic formats and include multiple online dimensions and multimedia study environments for teaching and learning. Andrew Roth of the New York Times wrote: "Academics at the conference said that the collaboration presented a chance, at least informally, to build the relationship between the two countries at a time of heightened tensions."

Read the New York Times article, "Columbia University Press to Publish New Translations of Russian Literature"

Announcing the winner of the 2015 READ RUSSIA PRIZE

New York, NY, May 29, 2015 - Read Russia today announced the winner of the 2015 READ RUSSIA PRIZE, celebrating the best translation of Russian literature into English published in 2014: Vladimir Sharov’s Before and During, translated by Oliver Ready and published by Dedalus Books. The annual literary prize carries a cash award shared by translator and publisher.

In a unanimous vote the READ RUSSIA PRIZE jury of scholars, translators, and authors praised Ready’s translation in its citation:

"Translation should not strive for perfection, but for excellence. Perfection is impossible, whereas excellence is only nearly impossible. And excellence is what Oliver Ready achieves in his rendering of Before and During by Vladimir Sharov. He captures the clear voice and confused mentality of the narrator who is able to love both Christ and Lenin, who prays for the sinner Ivan the Terrible and who tries to unravel the legacy of the Bolsheviks.

"Vladimir Sharov was born in 1952, the same year as Vladimir Putin. We have heard a great deal from Putin both in terms of his speeches and press conferences as well as in his actions – which, as the saying goes, speak louder than words. In a time when the Russian and American leadership both speak past one another, it is especially important to hear other voices from Russia, voices that can speak directly to us and directly of Russia which we in the West all too easily either romanticize or demonize. And it is possible for us to hear Sharov’s voice due to the hundreds of hours of detail-by-detail labor on the part of Oliver Ready, a solitary effort that has now resulted in the public, i.e. published, version in English of Sharov’s own long and solitary labor. His translation gives us all both pleasure and practical value – it is, as they used to say, dulce et utile.

"It is therefore fitting that the excellence of Ready’s achievement and the vision of Dedalus Books in publishing it be recognized by this prize."

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READ RUSSIA PRIZE 2015 Shortlist announced

On behalf of the READ RUSSIA PRIZE 2015 jury, Read Russia is pleased to announce the shortlist for the 2015 READ RUSSIA PRIZE to be awarded Friday, May 29, at the Grolier Club in New York City. The list is presented here in alphabetical order by author:

READ RUSSIA PRIZE
Celebrating the best translations of Russian literature 

2015 Shortlist

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
Translated by Oliver Ready
Penguin UK

Sergei Dovlatov, Pushkin Hills
Translated by Katherine Dovlatov
Counterpoint Press

Vladislav Khodasevich, Selected Poems
Translated by Peter Daniels
Overlook Press

Vladimir Sharov, Before and During
Translated by Oliver Ready
Dedalus Books

Anna Starobinets, The Icarus Gland
Translated by Jamie Rann
Skyscraper Press 

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Translated by Rosamund Bartlett
Oxford University Press 

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Translated by Marian Schwartz
Yale University Press 

Congratulations to all the talented nominees!

2015 READ RUSSIA Prize to be awarded May 29

The READ RUSSIA PRIZE is awarded in New York every year for works of Russian literature in English translation. The 2015 READ RUSSIA PRIZE awards ceremony will be held at the very end of Book Expo America on Friday, May 29, at the Grolier Club in New York.  

Professor Gary Saul Morson, author, translator, and Frances Hooper Professor of the Arts and Humanities at Northwestern University, will help present the awards to the winning translators and publishers.  Professor Morson, whose popular classes at Northwestern on Russian literature touch hundreds of students every year, also will present a special new lecture: "Because Everyone Needs a Little Russian Literature."

More than 20 new titles, listed below, have been nominated by their publishing houses in 2015.  The shortlist will be announced online here on May 20.

The 2014 READ RUSSIA PRIZE winner was Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s Autobiography of a Corpse, translated by Joanne Turnbull with Nikolai Formozov and published by New York Review Books.

RUSSIAN LITERATURE WEEK! 2014

NEW YORK & ONLINE!

Read Russia is pleased to announce the launch of RUSSIAN LITERATURE WEEK! 2014, an annual series of live and online events and publications designed to celebrate and encourage the translation of classic and contemporary Russian literature into English. 

Described more formally as “a celebration of Russian literature in translation featuring distinguished authors, translators, editors, publishers, journalists, filmmakers, broadcasters, & arts, education, and cultural institutions,” RUSSIAN LITERATURE WEEK! 2014 will celebrate & promote in particular new translations of Russian literature and new film and online initiatives about Russian literature and book culture from Amazon Crossing, Columbia University Press, Dalkey Archive, Deep Vellum, Dzanc Books, Farrar Straus Giroux, Glagoslav, Melville House, New Vessel Press, New York Review Books, Northwestern University Press, One World, Overlook Press, Oxford University Press, PBS Distribution, Penguin Books, Profile Books, Prospect Books, Pushkin Press, Random House, Skyscraper Publications, Theater Communications Group, WNET/Channel 13, W. W. Norton, Yale University Press, and other publishers and producers large and small.

RUSSIAN LITERATURE WEEK! 2014 will run December 1-5, 2014, and include live & online events, readings, panel presentations, roundtables, discussions, and film screenings.  Leading authors, publishers, and especially translators will preside over New York City events including:

Monday, December 1, 7:00 p.m.


PANEL DISCUSSION:
New Old Classics: Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov
The Grolier Club
47 East 60th Street, New York, NY

What is the consistent appeal of classics in Russian literature – to translators, to publishers, and to new audiences? A conversation with New York Review Books editor Edwin Frank and celebrated translator Marian Schwartz, moderated by translator and PEN World Voices co-founder Esther Allen. Followed by a reception.

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