OLGA LIVSHIN

Welcome

I am a writer who helps others tell their stories. My family is from Odesa, Ukraine and Moscow, Russia, and I am from berries and tea and separation.

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I coach adults and children in writing. My adult mentees are poets; I teach kids and teens all genres, and coach high school seniors on the college essay. All lessons are one-on-one, and the emphasis is on helping the individual young person tap into their voice. We read and imitate international and diverse literature along with Anglo-American classics of children's literature. 

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I offer poets coaching and manuscript critiques with insight, honesty, and heart. My advice is informed by my poetry, which is published in Poetry, AGNI, the Southern Review, and Calyx.  I have organized, moderated, and spoken on a number of AWP conference panels about poetic takes on immigration and Ukraine, on translation and other matters.

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I have earned fellowships to the Yetzirah Poetry Conference, the Porches Residency, and Prospect Street Writers House. I have been a resident at VCCA and the Writers' Colony at Dairy Hollow. 

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I spearheaded the translation of Ukrainian poet Lyudmyla Khersonska's war diary in poems, Today Is a Different War, translated with Lev Fridman, Andrew Janco, and Maya Chhabra and published by Arrowsmith Press.

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My poetry collection A Life Replaced  (Poets & Traitors, 2019) braids together poems on immigration in America with translations from Anna Akhmatova and the immigrant poet  Vladimir Gandelsman. Many poems are responses to these two voices; some are stand-alone works. The foreword is by Ilya Kaminsky. You can read reviews in the Los Angeles Review of Books and Reading in Translation.

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And to stay in touch, please feel free to subscribe to my newsletter.

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Welcome, and enjoy your stay!