Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa, Ukraine in 1977. At age four he lost most of his hearing after contracting mumps. He and his family arrived in the United States in 1993, when his family was granted asylum by the American government.
He is the author of Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press) and Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press) and co-editor and co-translated many other books, including Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (Harper Collins), In the Hour of War: Poems from Ukraine (Arrowsmith), and Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva (Alice James Books).
His work was the finalist for The National Book Award and won The Los Angeles Times Book Award, The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, The National Jewish Book Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship, The Whiting Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, Lannan Fellowship, Academy of American Poets’ Fellowship, NEA Fellowship, Poetry magazine’s Levinson Prize, and was also shortlisted for National Book Critics Circle Award, Neustadt International Literature Prize, and T.S. Eliot Prize (UK).
Deaf Republic was The New York Times’ Notable Book, and was also named Best Book of the Year by dozens of other publications, including Washington Post, Times Literary Supplement, The Telegraph, Publishers Weekly, The Guardian, Irish Times, Vanity Fair, Lithub, Library Journal, and New Statesman.
Ilya Kaminsky reads “We Lived Happily During the War” from his book, Deaf Republic.
Additional text and readings from Deaf Republic (multimedia feature from The New Yorker, February 11, 2019)