The first Russian stand at BookExpo America New York, 25 - 27 May 2010 This year the BOOKS FROM RUSSIA stand took part in BookExpo America, the main fair in the American book industry. The stand was organised by the Russian Federal agency for Press and Mass Communications and represented a range of Russian publishers. BookExpo America is currently undergoing major changes, transforming itself from a fair which focused primarily on the domestic market into an international book forum.

Friday 11 June, 7pm, Apollo Cinema
Maria Galina and Arkady Shtipel, two distinguished contemporary Russian poets, will read their poetry (in Russian). Maria Galina is a poet and writer whose work is made up of a colourful mix of the ordinary and the extraordinary. Her avant-garde writing is juxtaposed with folkloric, otherworldly images which play within and alongside the everyday, making for a style which is completely her own.

Video poetry is a new phenomena in the contemporary Russian arts scene. In today’s world, media has no limits - information is mixed together with a myriad of fast, dynamic images, and punchy sounds. Video poetry has incorporated these elements that are all around us and used them to create a new art form which has become extremely popular in Russia during the last couple of years. Leading experimental poets and film directors, including Kirill Serebrennikov and Valeria Gai Germanika, amongst others, have come together to create films based on poems read by the poets themselves. The performances are also strongly influenced by European artists of the 70s and 80s, such as Gianni Toti, Richard Kostelanetz, Arnaldo Antunes and Caterina Davinio, whose experimental work was considered arthouse and cutting edge thirty years ago, but seems to strike a chord with the world we live in today. In our culture of multi-media, the merging of poetry, music and film feels only natural. ACADEMIA ROSSICA will be premiering three programmes of video poetry at SLOVO literature festival. The three programmes will offer a unique opportunity to see the works of fifteen of the most important names in Russian video poetry, including Andrei Rodionov, Inna Kabysh and Alina Butokhnovskaya. Programme 1 & 3 will be screened at the Apollo Cinema, Piccadilly at 18.30 on 20 & 22 April. To book tickets, call 0871 220 6000 or go to www.apollocinemas.com Programme 2 includes readings from cutting edge contemporary Russian and British poets and takes place at Calvert 22 art gallery at 18.30. Attendance is by invitation only. These events are part of the SLOVO festival and organised in collaboration with Tom Chivers and Penned in the Margins. These programmes are curated by Andrei Rodionov, one of the leading contemporary Russian poets and Ekaterina Troepolskaya, who also curates the Piataya Noga video poetry festival.

Red Pyramid
Russian Literature from the 21st Century
In this literary edition of ROSSICA, we are delighted to present the first English translations of new works by nine leading Russian writers. ROSSICA 19 introduces their work through extracts from six novels, recently published in Russia, and three short stories especially written for this anthology.

26 May
Moscow
On the 26th of May, the names of the writers shortlisted for the 'Big Book' literary prize were announced. 13 authors have been shortlisted. Two of the shortlisted books were entered into the competition as manuscripts: Mariam Petrosyan's 'The House Where'and Andrei Baldin's 'The Extension of the Full Stop'.

When Academia Rossica approached me to serve on the jury for their translation prize, I was excited and intrigued. What would the field be like, how many entries would there be, were there still publishers around in the West willing to produce translations of serious Russian works? The classics apart, was there more to Russian literature for English-speaking people than penguins and historical detectives? My caricature of the average Western reader's view of Russian literature today can perhaps be excused in part by my own education.

I see Russia’s future in the brightest of hues. Admittedly, this sort of statement does not befit a dystopian writer like me, who is supposed to make dire predictions, though for some what I am going to tell you will sound as bad as an anti-utopia (while I see it as an almost ideal outcome).

Along with the 45 Indian authors arriving in London next week to take part in the book fair's India programme will be a smaller touring party of Russian writers. Like the Indian promotion, Russian Literature Week is based at the fair but also takes in central London - there are nightly discussions with authors at Waterstone's, Piccadilly, starting on Monday - and events around the country.

I see Russia’s future in the brightest of hues. Admittedly, this sort of statement does not befit a dystopian writer like me, who is supposed to make dire predictions, though for some what I am going to tell you will sound as bad as an anti-utopia (while I see it as an almost ideal outcome).

Along with the 45 Indian authors arriving in London next week to take part in the book fair's India programme will be a smaller touring party of Russian writers. Like the Indian promotion, Russian Literature Week is based at the fair but also takes in central London - there are nightly discussions with authors at Waterstone's, Piccadilly, starting on Monday - and events around the country.

By Maria Levina
"Distribution remains the biggest issue," said director Mikhail Kalatozishvili, whose film "Wild Field" was presented at the Kinotavr festival in Sochi in June and at the Russian Film Festival in London late last month. "We still have only about 1,500 modern screens, and although this number is increasing it will be a few years before there are enough theaters to show many of the films produced."

by Sergei Lukyanenko
Translated by Andrew Bromfield
William Heinemann of The Random House Group, 2007, pp. 487
The morally ambiguous second volume in Lukyanenko's trilogy (after 2006's Night Watch, a major literary and cinematic success in Russia) portrays the epic supernatural struggle between good and evil from the point-of-view of the witch Alisa Donnikova.

by Alexander Pushkin
Translated by James E. Falen
Oxford University Press, 2007, pp.2015
'The people are silent' So ends Pushkin's great historical drama Boris Godunov, in which Boris's reign as Tsar witnesses civil strife and intrigue, brutality and misery. Its legacy is an uncertain future for the new Tsar whose inauguration is met with devastating silence by the people.

by Vladimir Sorokin
Translated by Jamey Gambrell
New York Review of Books; 2007; pp.321
In stripped down, poker-faced prose, Sorokin registers a world in which the inhumanity of man to man is exploited by a murderous emerging race who are, by contrast, in sweet mutual harmony with one another. This is a Master and Margarita for the age of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

by Maria Galina
Translated by Amanda Love Darragh
Glas; 2008; pp. 368
The central theme of "Iramifications" is the eternal misunderstanding between East and West. Misconceptions and the notion of identity are explored on a journey from Odessa to the symbolic Oriental city of Iram, via the complexity of friendship and the blurring of borders between fantasy and reality. Tales are woven, deserts are crossed, and battles are fought. East and West are worlds apart...or are they?

By Maria Levina
"Distribution remains the biggest issue," said director Mikhail Kalatozishvili, whose film "Wild Field" was presented at the Kinotavr festival in Sochi in June and at the Russian Film Festival in London late last month. "We still have only about 1,500 modern screens, and although this number is increasing it will be a few years before there are enough theaters to show many of the films produced."

Apollo West End
ArtKino is a Moscow film club whose aim is to revive the tradition of auteur cinema in Russia. It also organises a festival of short and documentary films.

Now - 31 August 2008
Modern Art Oxford Gallery
Entry Free

Poet, novelist, short-story writer, playwright, biographer and translator Elaine Feinstein worked variously as an editor for Cambridge University Press, as Lecturer in English at Bishop's Stortford Training College, and as a journalist. She contributes to many periodicals, including the Times Literary Supplement. Elaine Feinstein's first volume of poetry, In a Green Eye, was published in 1966. Her later work has been influenced by the poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva, a poet whose work she has translated from the Russian. She received a Cholmondeley Award in 1990. Her book, Anna of all the Russias: The Life of a Poet under Stalin (2005), is a biography of Anna Akhmatova. Elaine Feinstein is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and was elected on to the Council of the Royal Society of Literature in 2007.

Born in 1967, Dmitry Bykov is a prolific, award-winning prose writer, whose works almost invariably give rise to heated debates in the literary press. He is also a widely published poet of some eight collections of poetry and he recently published an impressive, detailed new biography on Boris Pasternak, for which he was awarded the ‘Big Book' prize in 2007. Since the 1990s, Dmitry Bykov has produced a constant stream of newspaper articles, reviews and essays on a wide range of subjects from literature to politics. He has also hosted a weekly radio show and some television discussion programmes. Bykov goes out to court controversy and stimulate discussion, as can be seen in his recently published novel Zh.D., taken from two Russian letters of the alphabet: ‘It's going to be fiercely Russophobic and fiercely anti-Semitic,' he said just before the novel's publication. He went on, ‘It depicts both Russians and Jews as virus nations, which bring misfortune and decay to whatever they're trying to colonize. It's the best book I've ever written, it's actually the best book that can possibly be written today, and it's very, very funny.' Whatever else he might do, Dmitry Bykov is sure to cause a lively debate by his audacious originality!

Tretyakov Gallery
This issue is dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the Tretyakov Gallery, Russia’s most famous art museum which contains the national collection of Russian art.

Rumiantsev’s Arc – Library of a Nation
If the book lies at the heart of Russian culture, then the most vital, life-preserving institution in Russian culture is the library. This issue of ROSSICA focuses on the remarkable history and collections of Russia’s largest library: originally called the Rumiantsev Museum, later the Lenin Library (Leninka) it is now the Russian State Library.

Rumiantsev’s Arc – Library of a Nation
If the book lies at the heart of Russian culture, then the most vital, life-preserving institution in Russian culture is the library. This issue of ROSSICA focuses on the remarkable history and collections of Russia’s largest library: originally called the Rumiantsev Museum, later the Lenin Library (Leninka) it is now the Russian State Library.

Poet, novelist, short-story writer, playwright, biographer and translator Elaine Feinstein worked variously as an editor for Cambridge University Press, as Lecturer in English at Bishop's Stortford Training College, and as a journalist. She contributes to many periodicals, including the Times Literary Supplement. Elaine Feinstein's first volume of poetry, In a Green Eye, was published in 1966. Her later work has been influenced by the poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva, a poet whose work she has translated from the Russian. She received a Cholmondeley Award in 1990.

Born in 1967, Dmitry Bykov is a prolific, award-winning prose writer, whose works almost invariably give rise to heated debates in the literary press. He is also a widely published poet of some eight collections of poetry and he recently published an impressive, detailed new biography on Boris Pasternak, for which he was awarded the ‘Big Book' prize in 2007. Since the 1990s, Dmitry Bykov has produced a constant stream of newspaper articles, reviews and essays on a wide range of subjects from literature to politics. He has also hosted a weekly radio show and some television discussion programmes.

Tretyakov Gallery
This issue is dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the Tretyakov Gallery, Russia’s most famous art museum which contains the national collection of Russian art.