Eastern Europe

Zuzanna Ginczanka was a Polish-Jewish poet of the interwar period. She was born Sara Gincburg in 1917 in Kiev, which was then part of Russia. She grew up speaking primarily Russian and opted to live in Poland...

Lyudmyla Diadchenko was born on August 2, 1988, in the village of Shevchenkove, Ukraine. Diadchenko has published multiple poetry collections in Ukrainian, including Fee For Access (Green Dog, 2011), A Hen...

Swiss writer Robert Walser was born in 1878. He wrote many novels and essays, and over a thousand short stories in his native German language. He also worked several different kinds of jobs, including bank...

The Russian poet, essayist, and journalist Maria Stepanova was born in Moscow. She is the author of over ten poetry collections, three of which have recently been translated and published in English: War of...

Al Zolynas was born to Lithuanian parents in Austria and grew up in Sydney, Australia, and Chicago. He then spent time in Salt Lake City and St. Paul, Minnesota. He earned a PhD at the University of Utah. ...

A versatile critic, translator, prose writer, and theorist of poetry, Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev was an innovative, imaginative, and influential poet who enjoyed particular prominence in Russia during the...

Georg Trakl is an important lyric poet in German literature of the early 20th century. Critics associate his work with various modern artistic movements, and he is viewed as one of the principal writers to...

Serhiy Zhadan is a Ukrainian poet, writer, essayist, and translator. His poems included here are part of a collection forthcoming from Lost Horse Press’s Contemporary Ukrainian Poetry Series. Zhadan lives ...

Russian poet and civil rights activist Natalya Yevgenyevna Gorbanevskaya was born in Moscow. She attended Moscow State University, but she was expelled for her political activities. She would later earn a ...

Shpresa Qatipi is a translator and a professor of English at Tirana University. She co-translated, with Henry Israeli, Child of Nature (New Directions, 2012), a volume of poetry by Albanian poet Luljeta Lleshanaku...

Poet and translator Ana Ristović was born in Belgrade, Serbia. She has published six books of poetry, including Directions for Use, Meteoric Debris, Snovidna voda (Dreamwater), Zabava za dokone kćeri (Party...

Carmen Bugan (she/her) is the author of the poetry collections Time Being (Shearsman Books, 2022), Crossing the Carpathians (Carcanet Press, 2004), The House of Straw (Shearsman Books, 2014), and Releasing...

A Russian poet, novelist, and dissident, Irina Ratushinskaya was born in Odessa and studied physics, rather than the humanities, at Odessa I. I. Mechnikov National University, in part because she feared the...

Aleksander Wat was the pen name of Aleksander Chwat. He was born in Warsaw, Poland, and was descended from an illustrious Jewish family. He studied philosophy, psychology, and logic at Warsaw University and...

Romanian and French poet, critic, and philosopher Benjamin Fondane was a major figure in Jewish existentialism. Known primarily as a symbolist and surrealist, Fondane began his career in 1914 when he was a...

Soviet poet, playwright, and wartime correspondent Konstantin Simonov was born in St. Petersburg into a military family. His father died shortly after World War I, and years later, when his stepfather was ...

Russian geologist, poet, and novelist Vladislav Zanadvorov was born in the town of Perm, Russia. He attended a technical high school and then traveled frequently on geological expeditions throughout Russia...

Georgian poet Mirza Gelovani fought in the Soviet ranks during World War II. His work was recognized early on for his “childlike wonderment at nature,” and Gelovani was later characterized by Donald Rayfield...

Romanian surrealist poet and translator Gellu Naum was born in Bucharest in 1915, the son of Romantic poet Andrei Naum, who died in World War I. Early in his career, the younger Naum studied at the University...

Miklós Radnóti is considered one of the greatest Hungarian poets of the 20th century. He was born in Budapest to Jewish parents. After a stint in his uncle’s textile business, he turned to literature. Inspired...