National award-winning author Ilya Kaminsky joins M.F.A. core faculty

Ilya Kaminsky

Ilya Kaminsky is the latest addition to the Randolph College M.F.A. in creative writing program’s core faculty.

Kaminsky was born in the former Soviet Union in 1977, and arrived in the United States in 1993 when his family was granted asylum by the American government. He is the author of Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press), which won the Whiting Writer’s Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, the Dorset Prize, a Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship, and the Ruth Lilly Fellowship. Dancing In Odessa was also named Best Poetry Book of the Year by ForeWord Magazine. Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press), Kaminsky’s much-anticipated second book, will be released in 2019.

Kaminsky has co-edited, along with Susan Harris, the Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (2010) and edited and co-translated Polina Barskova’s This Lamentable City (2010). In addition to his new role in the Randolph M.F.A. program, Kaminsky teaches at San Diego State University.