Video from Eastern European Voices for Resistance and Reinvention

March 26, 2026March 26, 2026 ~ Olga Zilberbourg ~ Leave a comment

Thanks to those of you who could attend our event, Eastern European Voices for Resistance and Reinvention, hosted by Library Nineteen in Baltimore on March 7. We loved having you as our audience and hope to continue the conversations in various ways.

Ukraine needs all of our support. While there are many ways to help, we’re asking for donataions to Ukraine TrustChain, an organization that helps evacuate civilians out of war zones: https://www.ukrainetrustchain.org/

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Eastern European Voices for Resistance and Reinvention

February 19, 2026April 17, 2026 ~ Olga Zilberbourg ~ Leave a comment

Background: Blue
Foreground: Words in yellow read : Resistance + Reinvention Eastern European Voices
Words in black read : A Benefit for Ukraine

Background: Blue
Foreground: Word in yellow reads: Featuring
Words in white read: Alina Adams, Valerie Bandura, Svetlana Binshtok, Daniel Blokh, Katie Farris, Katarzyna Jakubiak, Victoria Juharyan, Andrea Jurjevic, Ilya Kaminsky, Julia Kolchinsky, Maria Kuznetsova, Ellen Litman, Olga Livshin, olga mikolaivna, Asya Partan, Irina Reyn, Ena Selimović, Lucy Silbaugh, Lana Spendl, Alina Stefanescu, Natalya Sukhonos, Vlada Teper, Katherine E. Young, Tatsiana Zamirovskaya, Olga Zilberbourg, and Lena Zycinsky.

When: March 6, 7:00 pm

Where: Library Nineteen
606 S. Ann St, Baltimore MD, 21231

This one-of-a-kind reading brings together writers from Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet countries who now make their homes across the United States. Taking place during the 2026 AWP Conference, the event celebrates a growing circle of poets, prose writers, and translators from complex, cross-cultural identities whose work is shaped by displacement and immigration, survival and resilience.

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Video from Born in the USSR: Diaspora Writers Against War

April 7, 2025May 21, 2025 ~ Olga Zilberbourg ~ Leave a comment

Thanks to those of you who could attend our event, Born in the USSR: Diaspora Writers Against War, hosted by the Wende Museum on March 28. We loved having you as our audience and hope to continue the conversations in various ways.

Thank you for donating to Ukraine Trust Chain. Ukraine needs all of our support. Please continue to spread the word and donate here: https://www.ukrainetrustchain.org/

The video from our event is now online:

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Born in the USSR: Diaspora Writers Against War

March 12, 2025February 6, 2026 ~ Olga Zilberbourg ~ 2 Comments

This one of a kind reading brings together Soviet-born writers as they weave together an intricate story of identity, memory, cultural intersections, immigration, and war. From fiction to poetry, memoir and journalism, and work in translation, the reading presents a deep dive into the individual and collective experiences of the Soviet-born diaspora in the U.S. This free event includes a fundraiser in support of humanitarian aid in Ukraine and aligns with The Wende Museum’s current exhibition “Undercurrents II: Archives and the Making of Soviet Jewish Identity.” Autographed books will be on sale, courtesy of Village Well.

Hosted by The Wende Museum, readers include poets, writers, and translators: Katya Apekina, Yelena Furman, Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry, Julia Kolchinsky, Arina Kole, Maria Kuznetsova, Olga Livshin, Ruth Madievsky, Ainsley Morse, Luisa Muradyan, Jane Muschenetz, Asya Partan, Irina Reyn, Diana Ruzova, Timmy Straw, Vlada Teper, Sasha Vasilyuk, and Olga Zilberbourg.

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You Never Know When Speaking Russian Might Come in Handy …: An Essay by Alina Adams

January 18, 2022March 1, 2024 ~ Yelena Furman ~ 3 Comments

It would be hard to overstate my love of both figure skating and detective fiction, which admittedly isn’t something one normally thinks of together. It is therefore beyond thrilling to feature this personal essay by Alina Adams, who has written a series of five figure skating murder mysteries (yes, really, and I plan to order every one of them). A prolific writer with several fiction and non-fiction titles, Alina’s most recent novel is The Nesting Dolls, which you can read about in the poignant and humor-filled conversation between her and Maria Kuznetsova that Olga recently organized on this blog. I loved reading the story Alina tells below about working as a Russian-speaking figure skating researcher (she must have had a hand in many of the broadcasts that I avidly watched), and I confess to losing, in the best possible way, some of my time to being nostalgically taken back to 1990s figure skating coverage through the two videos in the piece, one of which features Alina translating (for Irina Slutskaya! You all know who she is, right?! Right?!). Let yourself be transported to that marvelous skating era, get ready for all the figure skating at the Olympics next month . . . and watch out, there’s a murderer, or five, on the loose.

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Crowded Lives and Crowded Stories: Alina Adams and Maria Kuznetsova Discuss their Recent Novels

October 13, 2021March 1, 2024 ~ Olga Zilberbourg ~ 2 Comments

We are delighted to present a conversation between Alina Adams and Maria Kuznetsova, whose recent critically acclaimed novels make significant contributions to the body of Russian-American literature. Both Adams and Kuznetsova were born in the USSR and immigrated to the US with their families as children, though some years apart. In their novels, the authors turn to USSR’s history to tell their stories. Adams is a professional writer on topics from figure skating to parenthood and a New York Times bestselling author of soap-opera tie-ins. In The Nesting Dolls (Harper, 2020), she focuses on three generations of Soviet-Jewish women in a story that moves from Odessa to Siberian exile to the Brighton Beach immigrant community. Kuznetsova is a writer, an academic, and a literary editor. In her second novel, Something Unbelievable (Random House, 2021), she alternates between the perspectives of a grandmother and a granddaughter: between the story of a WWII-era escape from the Nazis taking over Kiev and the experiences of a contemporary New Yorker adjusting to new motherhood.

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Books for Review

August 25, 2021March 1, 2024 ~ Olga Zilberbourg ~ 6 Comments

Punctured Lines is looking for reviews of the following recent titles. Reviewers should have some expertise in terms of their chosen work, engaging substantively with its themes and techniques and bringing in direct citation to back up claims. If you are interested in reviewing a work not on the list but that fits our overall themes of feminism, LGBT, diaspora, etc., please let us know. Thank you, and we look forward to working with you.