Thanks so much for reading, Eva! I'm glad to hear it resonated. Have you read Victoria Lomasko's The Last Soviet Artist? I found it really interesting—thought you might, too!

Dear @kristinaten.bsky.social, your essay was so meaningful and hit me really hard on multiple levels. I didn't know about the region you mentioned in Georgia, but I know that there have been and is still a fairly large Armenian population, which is my background. Thank you for sharing 💜

I love this essay so much!!

Don't miss @kristinaten.bsky.social on the blog with an essay about nostalgia, complex geographies, & the inspiration for her speculative collection TELL ME YOURS, I'LL TELL YOU MINE. Stillhouse Press, October 7, 2025--preorder! #BookSky #speculativefiction puncturedlines.com/2025/09/16/w...

Big thanks to @patrickbarb.bsky.social for chatting with me about the great Mariana Enriquez for @shortwavebooks.bsky.social. We talked: polluted places, collective shame, horror with a social consciousness, the “default” reader, the early internet, borderlands, and more.

This is a gorgeous, thoughtful essay by @kristinaten.bsky.social (with incredible accompanying photos) that stays with you. 🖤

Kris distilled the essence of nostalgia and search for identity in this emotional essay and it's no different than her collection.

An essay by @kristinaten.bsky.social, whose short story collection, Tell Me Yours, I'll Tell You Mine, is out later this year. @olgaz.bsky.social

On nostalgia and more by @kristinaten.bsky.social "The acquisition of the hundred-plus children’s books from my mom’s basement wasn’t exactly in keeping with this plan. So naturally I loaded them up [...] and set them up that day." puncturedlines.com/2025/09/16/w... @olgaz.bsky.social

Wrote a photo essay for @puncturedlines.bsky.social about nostalgia, Soviet-era children’s books, speculative fiction, and a recent trip to the country of Georgia. Come for the picture of baby-me talking into a mall phone. Stay for Svetlana Boym 💗 ➡️ puncturedlines.com/2025/09/16/

My book came out 6 years ago -- thank you WTAW Press for taking a chance on this collection. It made my world so much bigger and helped me meet so many wonderful people and find community. Huge hugs to all my readers -- forever grateful.

My book is available for pre-order from @nupress.bsky.social. 25% discount with code NUP2025 at nupress.northwestern.edu/978081014884... Only a few more weeks until it comes out!

This time, someone emails to subpoena records of my supposed coworker. —"The Double" by @yelenafurman.bsky.social https://www.fiveminutelit.com/the-double

Huge thank you to Susanna Baird and the team at Five Minutes. The journal's premise is to describe 5 minutes of your life in 100 words, and the piece was inspired by the event described in the first sentence that happened recently, yet again. I have more such stories, but they exceed 100 words.

ICYMI: An excerpt from Karolina Krasuska's Soviet-Born, the first academic monograph on Soviet-Born contemporary immigrant writers in North America. Thank you, as always, @olgaz.bsky.social for editing collaboration.

Lydia’s home is out of date and ill-fitting with the topography of Moscow as imagined in the story, which aligns with the way queer spaces are theorized. #BookSky puncturedlines.com/2025/09/01/q...

ICYMI: "Until more recently, Soviet-born Jewish writing in English has not featured many queer presences. At the same time, queerness has [...] become a defining [...] characteristic of [...] writerly and activist groups within the post-Soviet diaspora." puncturedlines.com/2025/09/01/q...

Lydia’s home is out of date and ill-fitting with the topography of Moscow as imagined in the story, which aligns with the way queer spaces are theorized. #BookSky puncturedlines.com/2025/09/01/q...

This week on @puncturedlines.bsky.social read an excerpt from Soviet-Born: The Afterlives of Migration in Jewish American Fiction by @karolinakrasuska.bsky.social -- the first academic volume devoted to ex-Soviet Jews living and writing in the US, where the largest number of such immigrants resides.

How does a book’s cover change in translation? In our September issue, Veronica Esposito reviews a range of translations of the fourth book in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet, looking at how book cover design can change from language to language. worldliteraturetoday.org/2025/septemb...

“We did not know anything and they know too much,” is Lara Vapnyar’s quick comparison of sex ed in the late Soviet Union and in the contemporary United States. An excerpt from @karolinakrasuska.bsky.social's SOVIET-BORN on @puncturedlines.bsky.social. #sovietsex #ussr #queer #womenintranslation

Today, an excerpt from Soviet-Born by @karolinakrasuska.bsky.social "Vapnyar moves beyond the [...] Soviet era socialist gender templates based on productivity, according to which working mothers are dutifully bound to serve their men." Thank you as always @olgaz.bsky.social for editing support.

"The fact that this debate exists [...] testifies to the richness and diversity of this body of work that, like immigrants themselves, resists easy categorizations." Today on the blog, an excerpt from @karolinakrasuska.bsky.social Soviet-Born: puncturedlines.com/2025/09/01/q...

Kamianets-Podilskyi in Ukraine is a storied city. Mikhail Goldis's memoir, translated by his grandson Marat Grinberg, is his account of working as a detective and district attorney in the post-war years, first in Krasyliv and then in Kamyanets-Podilskyi. Excerpt: puncturedlines.com/2025/08/20/r...

"The court proceeded to question the victims. They were both of average height and muscular. Studying them, I wondered how the puny Khanukovich had managed to overpower these strong fellas."

ICYMI: An excerpt from Memoirs of a Jewish District Attorney from Soviet Ukraine by Mikhail Goldis, trans. by his grandson, Marat Grinberg. @olgaz.bsky.social puncturedlines.com/2025/08/20/r...

For true crime fans: "An inebriated young man had assaulted patrons in a restaurant without any reason. The evidence was rock solid..."

Happy to feature this excerpt, w/ thanks to @olgaz.bsky.social for editing support. "I turned again to the man’s biography [...] twenty-one years old, a student at a construction community college and, as printed on the infamous fifth line in his passport—a Jew." puncturedlines.com/2025/08/20/r...

Today we have an excerpt from Memoirs of a Jewish District Attorney from Soviet Ukraine by Mikhail Goldis, trans. by Marat Grinberg, his grandson. This book will appeal to those interested in the history of Jews in Soviet Ukraine, as well as fans of true crime. puncturedlines.com/2025/08/20/r...

No matter the age of their readers, these writers and artists choose to address personal and historical trauma through the medium of art - puncturedlines.com/2025/08/05/g...

Delighted to see Tatsiana Zamirouskaya back in San Francisco for an event at Globus books next Friday August 22, presenting her new book! www.facebook.com/events/17067...

ICYMI: Graphic novels by women writers with connections to the former Soviet space

If you are looking for graphic novels by women writers with connections to the former Soviet sphere, @olgaz.bsky.social has some suggestions on @puncturedlines.bsky.social

Honored to have the opening poem from I Make Jokes When I’m Devastated featured at @onlypoemsmag.bsky.social today! www.onlypoemsdaily.com/p/into-obliv...

Huge thanks to Rachel South from Pushkin House London for help gathering material for this post, and to @yelenafurman.bsky.social for the same, and for editing!

Today on the blog: A list of graphic memoirs and novels of Soviet trauma, written by women with personal or familial connections to the former USSR. Y Nayberg, Lena Wolf, @rutasepetys.bsky.social, @verabrosgol.bsky.social, J Aleskeyeva, A Ulinich, H Moisseinen puncturedlines.com/2025/08/05/g...

ICYMI online, it's now in print (my review of Maya Arad's Happy New Years, with the line about Stanford tuition in the early 90s, which isn't in the review and isn't the only reason to read this book).

Google reminded me that five years ago I was reading Carolyn Gold Heilbrun's monograph on Constance Garnett. Readers of @puncturedlines.bsky.social might remember this post. I'm continuing to be fascinated less by Russian lit than by the powerful women behind it.. puncturedlines.com/2020/07/07/c...

My story "How to Tell If a Student in Your Beginning Poetry Class Is a Russian Spy" is back online thanks to After Happy Hour Reviews special reprint issue. It first appeared in Mad Hatters' review: Back from the USSR issue in 2011. 1/2 #shortstory #publication #reprint #humor #spyfiction

Yes, @bowlga has made me eager to read this novel by Vesna Maric. https://www.ronslate.com/on-the-president-shop-a-novel-by-vesna-maric/

Alina Adams connects the past to the present in her fiction and nonfiction work. Don't miss her essay on why she decided to set a section of her latest novel GO ON PRETENDING during Khrushchev's 1957 World Youth Festival. #books #USSR #history puncturedlines.com/2025/06/11/h...

As always, thank you to @olgaz.bsky.social for the editing collaboration. As mentioned in the introduction to the essay, there exists another novel in which the 1957 Youth Festival plays a role: Anya Ulinich's Petropolis: bookshop.org/p/books/petr...

ICYMI: New essay by Alina Adams on her new novel Go On Pretending: "In 1957, an interracial couple – a white-presenting Jewish woman and an African-American man – were precisely the people who could be taken in by the Soviet Union’s claim of a non-racist, non-antisemitic, non-sexist society." 1/

Finally

Today on @puncturedlines.bsky.social a new essay by past contributor Alina Adams on her interracial family's trip to Moscow (pre-Ukraine war) and her new novel, Go On Pretending (link in first comment). Thank you, as always, to @olgaz.bsky.social for the editing support.

"Growing up in the Soviet Union [...] I had also heard about the 'children of the rainbow,' those born to one Russian and one African (as well as many other ethnicities) parent after the 1957 World Youth Festival in Moscow, during the reign of Nikita Khrushchev." puncturedlines.com/2025/06/11/h...

"We do not want our streets militarized ... California will never stop fighting ... Do not give in to him." www.youtube.com/live/0n77NFj...