Prizewinning Russian Minimalism, New MFA Director!

Exciting news for the spring semester, translation lovers!

This just in from abroad: Moscow-based Russian poet Ivan Akhmetyev, featured in Exchanges: Migration from spring 2013, has been awarded the Andrey Bely Award for service to Russian literature “for his many years of work on the publication of uncensored 20th-century Russian literary classics and the anthologies Poetry of the Second Half of the 20th Century and Russian Poetry: 1950–2000,” reports the Bely Award website. The author of five books of poetry, Akhmetyev has also published unofficial poetry and prose of the Soviet period and coedited the poetry section of Samizdat [Self-published] Century.

For a smattering of Akhmetyev’s minimalist work translated into English by Alex Cigale, check out the below links:

In equally fantastic news here at home, beginning fall 2014, the Iowa Translation Workshop will welcome a new director, Dr. Aron Aji, present dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at St. Ambrose University, vice president of the American Literary Translators Association, member of PEN, and frequent lecturer on translation at the University of Iowa.

For insight into his translation process, read his “Translator Relay” in Words Without Borders.

For his reflections on translating Bilge Karasu’s A Long Day’s Evening (City Lights, 2012) for which he received an NEA Translation Fellowship, listen to his interview podcast with publisher City Lights. Aji also received a National Translation Award for his translation of Karasu’s The Garden of Departed Cats (New Directions, 2004).

Hearty congratulations to them both from the Iowa Translation Workshop and the editorial board here at Exchanges

Image: Courtesy of City Lights Publishers