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puncturedlines.bsky.social
Punctured Lines
@puncturedlines.bsky.social
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Post-Soviet Literature in and outside the Former Soviet Union. Blog by Yelena Furman @yelenafurman.bsky.social and Olga Zilberbourg
@olgaz.bsky.social

http://puncturedlines.com
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Punctured Lines @puncturedlines.bsky.social · 5d
Today we are featuring a personal essay by Dana Kanafina, a writer from Kazakhstan, now living in Germany
"So does all this suggest that sixty years from now, Kazakhstan will be as central to world literature as Canada is today?"

Many thanks to @olgaz.bsky.social for her editing advice and support.
Reposted by Punctured Lines
ncooperfrank.bsky.social
💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕
ginamurrell1.bsky.social Gina Murrell @ginamurrell1.bsky.social · 1d
This is the news I’ve been waiting for 😭 #FreeThemAll #AbolishICE
ziibiing.com ashley fairbanks @ziibiing.com · 1d
liam and his dad are home!

and someone please get rep. castro a coat!
February 1, 2026 at 5:16 PM
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olgaz.bsky.social
This anthology is now available for pre-order from @deepvellum.bsky.social. Huge thanks to the editors and the publishers of literature in translation for your support! I'm thrilled that this poem by Olga Bragina will now have even more reach. Please buy the book & ask your library to carry it!
A book with a purple cover displayed on the background of mossy bricks Best Literary Translations 2026 U.S. Poet Laureate ARTHUR SZE Guest Editor Noh Anothai Wendy Call Oyku Tekten Kola Tubosun Series Co-editors A spread from the book displayed on the background of mossy bricks [Out in the street the air smells of smoke] Olga Bragina Translated from the Russian by Olga Zilberbourg
January 30, 2026 at 8:27 PM
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deepvellum.bsky.social
BEST LITERARY TRANSLATIONS 2026 is available for preorder!

Guest edited by National Book Award winner Arthur Sze, BLT 2026 is compiled from over 450 submissions written in 62 original languages and features poetry and prose written in languages both widely spoken and critically endangered.
January 30, 2026 at 3:01 PM
puncturedlines.bsky.social
Writing is the Closest We Will Ever Get to Time Travel: An Essay by Dana Kanafina
#booktwitter #writerscraft #margaretatwood #personalessay #writerslife #kazakhstan
Text on yellow background: In April of last year, my short story came out in Aina Journal, a Kazakhstani literary magazine for women. Text on yellow background: In the middle of the poetry club meeting, we always had a smoking break. I smoke sporadically, which I’m not very proud of, so I was outside the cafe where we held the club, at the bottom of the stairs, one hand hovering over a trash can. Text on yellow background: “They have sex in there,” he said then Text and image on yellow background. On the right, an image of the author Dana Kanafina. On the left, text: Writing is the Closest We Will Ever Get to Time Travel: A Guest Essay by Dana Kanafina Below, text: Read on PuncturedLines.com
January 29, 2026 at 6:46 PM
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olgaz.bsky.social
I really related to Dana Kanafina's thought experiment, trying to imagine herself in the future, revisiting her home country from the position of acquiring a new identity. It's a game I've been playing my entire life.
January 28, 2026 at 6:47 PM
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awillner.bsky.social
"This is what I write about: the way poverty, hopelessness, and unspoken and unprocessed violence corrode a person, and I can’t write about it as it is actively happening to me. This isn’t an untreated, progressing illness; this is my home."
yelenafurman.bsky.social Yelena Furman @yelenafurman.bsky.social · 5d
Today on the blog, an essay about Kazakhstan's literary present and future by Dana Kanafina, a writer from Kazakhstan now living in Germany. Many thanks to @olgaz.bsky.social for her editing support with this piece.
January 28, 2026 at 6:39 PM
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yelenafurman.bsky.social
Today on the blog, an essay about Kazakhstan's literary present and future by Dana Kanafina, a writer from Kazakhstan now living in Germany. Many thanks to @olgaz.bsky.social for her editing support with this piece.
January 28, 2026 at 6:29 PM
puncturedlines.bsky.social
Today we are featuring a personal essay by Dana Kanafina, a writer from Kazakhstan, now living in Germany
"So does all this suggest that sixty years from now, Kazakhstan will be as central to world literature as Canada is today?"

Many thanks to @olgaz.bsky.social for her editing advice and support.
January 28, 2026 at 6:27 PM
Reposted by Punctured Lines
olgaz.bsky.social
I’m delighted to announce that on Sunday, February 8, 2026 my work will be featured by Stories on Stage, a reading series in Davis, CA. A professional actor Eileen Hoang will perform my story “Doctor Sveta” from LIKE WATER AND OTHER STORIES.
A yellow flyer with a flash of light across it. Boxes in red read: Stories on Stage Davis What: Short Fiction read by actors When: Second Sundays 4-6 pm Where: Sudwerk Brewing in Davis Black text on yellow background: February 8, 2026 Shirley Chan Her Story / My Story / History This amazing piece is a deeply moving hybrid narrative that interweaves three voices: a daughter's contemporary reflection, her mother's harrowing 1971 escape from China to Hong Kong as a freedom swimmer during the Cultural Revolution, and the stark historical facts of that brutal period. & Olga Zilberbourg A Russian-American author whose debut English-language collection LIKE WATER AND OTHER STORIES has garnered critical acclaim for its masterful blend of immigrant experience and universal human themes.
January 27, 2026 at 7:02 PM
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worldlittoday.bsky.social
Now through Feb. 15, US adressees who donate $100 to WLT will receive a copy of A Compass on the Navigable Sea: 100 Years of World Literature. Enjoy reading some of our greatest hits while supporting our mission to continue publishing writers worldwide.

worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/news-an...
January 26, 2026 at 9:17 PM
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kristinaten.bsky.social
Honored to find Tell Me Yours, I'll Tell You Mine on the BSFA Award Longlist! Wow! The company on this list makes me immensely proud to be writing today.
Vote for the BSFA Awards
www.bsfa.co.uk
January 22, 2026 at 6:36 PM
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yelenafurman.bsky.social
These are ones I found for MN; if anyone has other ideas, please share them, and please donate if you can.

www.ilcm.org

www.wfmn.org/funds/immigr...
January 24, 2026 at 11:34 PM
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jayaprakash777.bsky.social
Yelena Moskovich is 🔥
puncturedlines.bsky.social Punctured Lines @puncturedlines.bsky.social · 11d
NADEZHDA IN THE DARK

A novel-in-verse

by Yelena Moskovich

available now from Dzanc Books

Read the excerpt on puncturedlines.com
(ed. @yelenafurman.bsky.social and @olgaz.bsky.social)
everybody knows Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Chekhov, and if you’re bookish Bulgakov and Gogol and Pasternak, but who’s talking about Margarita Khemlin, who died a handful of years back and left us with a masterpiece, Klotsvog, sometimes at night, when Nadya has already fallen asleep next to me and the blinds on the slanted window of our bedroom are not fully shut, I lie on my back and glimpse the broad nighttime sky, a dark milky sky, a pauper’s sky, a dreamer’s sky, a prisoner’s sky, and I think about the sea and sailors lying in their cots, like me except alone, looking up at a broad nighttime sky, a dark milky sky, a doomed sky, as they think about land, I won’t ruin the whole story, but in the beginning, in Klotsvog, the main character, Maya, —who’s evacuated with her family from the little town of Ostyor in Ukraine when she’s very little, where the then-thriving Jewish population is near erased—and skip ahead, the past is the past, she’s trying it make it in the big city, but, of course, she falls for the wrong type of guy and has a baby too young, Nadezhda in the dark A Novel-IN-VERSE by Yelena Moskovich available now from Dzanc books Read the rest of the excerpt on puncturedlines.com
January 23, 2026 at 12:27 AM
puncturedlines.bsky.social
NADEZHDA IN THE DARK

A novel-in-verse

by Yelena Moskovich

available now from Dzanc Books

Read the excerpt on puncturedlines.com
(ed. @yelenafurman.bsky.social and @olgaz.bsky.social)
everybody knows Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Chekhov, and if you’re bookish Bulgakov and Gogol and Pasternak, but who’s talking about Margarita Khemlin, who died a handful of years back and left us with a masterpiece, Klotsvog, sometimes at night, when Nadya has already fallen asleep next to me and the blinds on the slanted window of our bedroom are not fully shut, I lie on my back and glimpse the broad nighttime sky, a dark milky sky, a pauper’s sky, a dreamer’s sky, a prisoner’s sky, and I think about the sea and sailors lying in their cots, like me except alone, looking up at a broad nighttime sky, a dark milky sky, a doomed sky, as they think about land, I won’t ruin the whole story, but in the beginning, in Klotsvog, the main character, Maya, —who’s evacuated with her family from the little town of Ostyor in Ukraine when she’s very little, where the then-thriving Jewish population is near erased—and skip ahead, the past is the past, she’s trying it make it in the big city, but, of course, she falls for the wrong type of guy and has a baby too young, Nadezhda in the dark A Novel-IN-VERSE by Yelena Moskovich available now from Dzanc books Read the rest of the excerpt on puncturedlines.com
January 22, 2026 at 5:28 PM
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ncooperfrank.bsky.social
San Francisco
resoundensemble.bsky.social Resound Ensemble @resoundensemble.bsky.social · 19d
Come sing with us! Resound will be auditioning new singers for all parts for the Spring 2026 season on Wednesday January 21 and 28. Sign up here:

www.resoundensemble.org/auditions
Resound Ensemble Singers Resound Enseble Singers and Artistic Director Resound Ensemble Singers and Artistic Director Full Resound Ensemble plus artistic director and accompaniest
January 14, 2026 at 7:35 PM
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yelenafurman.bsky.social
Thank you @olgaz.bsky.social for this piece on the blog and @lizoksbooks.bsky.social for making Klotsvog available to non-Russian speakers.
January 14, 2026 at 7:37 PM
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yelenafurman.bsky.social
"[W]e’re delighted to present a passage that refers to a novel we love, Margarita Khemlin’s Klotzvog, available in English translation by Lisa C. Hayden [...] we consider it one of the most insightful books about the Sov Jewish experience(s), written by a woman and centering a female protagonist."
puncturedlines.bsky.social Punctured Lines @puncturedlines.bsky.social · 20d
Today, we're celebrating the publication of Yelena Moskovich's NADEZHDA IN THE DARK, a novel-in-verse brought to us in the US by Dzanc Books. A story of a relationship, this book offers a review of recent history with Russia's war against Ukraine at the center.
#booksky
1/2
Book cover against mossy brick background. The cover features a partially shaded female face, lying horizontally across the page. Book info: Nadezhda in the Dark by Yelena Moskovich A screenshot from the front page of Punctured Lines, featuring the title of the blog and the blog post. Punctured Lines Post-Soviet Literature in and outside the Former Soviet Union “everybody knows . . .” An Excerpt from Nadezhda in the Dark by Yelena Moskovich A screenshot from the blog post: When asked to contribute our responses to this book, Yelena Furman said: “Brimming with references from Russian and Ukrainian literatures to Alla Pugacheva and the Moscow 1990s gay club scene, Nadezhda in the Dark is a poetic disquisition on global history and self-identity. Discussions of Soviet anti-Semitism and the war in Ukraine merge with explorations of immigration and queer love. In language simultaneously lyrical and sharp, Moskovich shows how the personal and political, the present and past, are inextricably linked in ways that are often traumatic but also occasionally hopeful.” Olga Zilberbourg said: “The Iliad for post-Soviet Jewish dykes . . . Moskovich’s voice commands our attention as it tells – breathlessly, passionately, mixing humor with earnestness – a story about two women whose Soviet roots both unite them and make their relationship impossible. Emotional pitch in this book is turned all the way up! I loved it.” A screenshot from the blog post: * * * everybody knows Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Chekhov, and if you’re bookish Bulgakov and Gogol and Pasternak, but who’s talking about Margarita Khemlin, who died a handful of years back and left us with a masterpiece, Klotsvog, sometimes at night, when Nadya has already fallen asleep next to me and the blinds on the slanted window of our bedroom are not fully shut, I lie on my back and glimpse the broad nighttime sky, a dark milky sky, a pauper’s sky, a dreamer’s sky,
January 14, 2026 at 7:37 PM
Reposted by Punctured Lines
lizoksbooks.bsky.social
It got chills reading this, thank you, @puncturedlines.bsky.social, Yelena Moskovich & Dzanc Books!

Margarita's "Klotsvog" means the world to me in ways I can't articulate. That's partly because I knew her & partly because the book hits so hard emotionally. The "dead tone" is a perfect example.
January 13, 2026 at 10:55 PM
puncturedlines.bsky.social
Today, we're celebrating the publication of Yelena Moskovich's NADEZHDA IN THE DARK, a novel-in-verse brought to us in the US by Dzanc Books. A story of a relationship, this book offers a review of recent history with Russia's war against Ukraine at the center.
#booksky
1/2
Book cover against mossy brick background. The cover features a partially shaded female face, lying horizontally across the page. Book info: Nadezhda in the Dark by Yelena Moskovich A screenshot from the front page of Punctured Lines, featuring the title of the blog and the blog post. Punctured Lines Post-Soviet Literature in and outside the Former Soviet Union “everybody knows . . .” An Excerpt from Nadezhda in the Dark by Yelena Moskovich A screenshot from the blog post: When asked to contribute our responses to this book, Yelena Furman said: “Brimming with references from Russian and Ukrainian literatures to Alla Pugacheva and the Moscow 1990s gay club scene, Nadezhda in the Dark is a poetic disquisition on global history and self-identity. Discussions of Soviet anti-Semitism and the war in Ukraine merge with explorations of immigration and queer love. In language simultaneously lyrical and sharp, Moskovich shows how the personal and political, the present and past, are inextricably linked in ways that are often traumatic but also occasionally hopeful.” Olga Zilberbourg said: “The Iliad for post-Soviet Jewish dykes . . . Moskovich’s voice commands our attention as it tells – breathlessly, passionately, mixing humor with earnestness – a story about two women whose Soviet roots both unite them and make their relationship impossible. Emotional pitch in this book is turned all the way up! I loved it.” A screenshot from the blog post: * * * everybody knows Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Chekhov, and if you’re bookish Bulgakov and Gogol and Pasternak, but who’s talking about Margarita Khemlin, who died a handful of years back and left us with a masterpiece, Klotsvog, sometimes at night, when Nadya has already fallen asleep next to me and the blinds on the slanted window of our bedroom are not fully shut, I lie on my back and glimpse the broad nighttime sky, a dark milky sky, a pauper’s sky, a dreamer’s sky,
January 13, 2026 at 10:01 PM
Reposted by Punctured Lines
jacquiwine.bsky.social
“Now that something had been arranged, I realized just how much I wanted to leave. Now that I could gather my thoughts, I felt frightened. I could see what life would be like for me if I stayed.” #BookSky 💙📚 #NYRBWomen25

jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2025/12/28/m...
Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea by Teffi (tr. R Chandler, E Chandler AM Jackson & I Steinberg)
Born in St. Petersburg in 1872, Teffi (Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya) went on to become a celebrated writer in early 20th-century Russia, publishing poems, short stories, satirical sketches and plays to gr…
jacquiwine.wordpress.com
December 31, 2025 at 8:32 AM
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olgaz.bsky.social
Thanks for publishing my review of Maria Stepanova's new novel, The Disappearing Act, translated by Sasha Dugdale!

www.ronslate.com/on-the-disap...
January 6, 2026 at 8:47 PM
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bergstrombookstore.bsky.social
Just finished the forthcoming @newvesselpress.bsky.social title My Dreadful Body by Egana Djabbarova, translated by @lizoksbooks.bsky.social Mark your calendars, you will want to add this book to your TBR list. A story of the body as the intersection of cultural expectations, family, and disease.
January 5, 2026 at 12:01 AM
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fiveminutelit.bsky.social
The Double" by @yelenafurman.bsky.social in case you missed it
January 3, 2026 at 12:25 AM
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seventydys.bsky.social
My @theguardian.com review of ‘Pulse’ by Cynan Jones @grantabooks.bsky.social. www.theguardian.com/books/2025/d...
Fiction Review Pulse by Cynan Jones review - short stories that show the vitality of the form The Welsh author vividly captures the solitude, hard labour, dramas and dangers of rural life David Hayden
December 15, 2025 at 11:05 AM
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olgaz.bsky.social
Tomorrow in Washington DC!
olgaz.bsky.social Olga Zilberbourg @olgaz.bsky.social · Dec 10
I'm heading to DC to meet @bergstrombookstore.bsky.social in person!! If you're in the area, you will not want to miss this Central/Eastern/South Europe focused event next week! With @katherineeyoung.bsky.social Turkoslavia's Ena Selimović, Roman Kostovski of Plamen Press and Greg Bernstein?!
A flyer with the background of a wintry landscapes in shades of blue and pine trees. On the foreground, the text reads: Bergstrom Press and Books presents: A Literary Lagniappe A Reading and Open Mic by friends of Bergstrom Books with Olga Zilberbourg, Katherine E Young, Ena Selimović, Roman Kostovski, & Greg Bernstein [ three book covers: LIKE WATER AND OTHER STORIES, PEOPLE AND TREES, UNDERGROUND BARBIE] Join us on December 16th at 6 pm for a reading and discussion about writing, and translation with a focus on Central/East Europe and beyond! Location: Kensington Row Bookshop 3786 Howard Eve, Kensington MD
December 15, 2025 at 6:19 PM