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Olga Zilberbourg

@olgaz.bsky.social
3.1K followers 2K following 2.4K posts

Fiction writer. Like Water & Other Stories (WTAW Press) Co-moderator, San Francisco Writers Workshop (Tuesdays 7-9 pm at Noisebridge) Co-founder, Punctured Lines, a blog ab literatures of the former USSR & diaspora, w Yelena Furman Finishing 1st novel

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Mike Karpa @mikekarpa.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Come join @mumblers.bsky.social at the Litquake small press fair in San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Gardens, 11-4 Sunday Oct 4. Readings and music on stage #Booksky www.litquake.org/bookfair
litquake.org
Book Fair | Litquake
On Sunday, September 28, join a curated spread of small presses and literary magazines for the Litquake Book Fair in Yerba Buena Gardens.
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christina500 @christina500.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
The cut bled, the pain was sharp: my terror had passed its climax; other feelings succeeded. "Wicked and cruel boy!" I said. "You are like a murderer--you are like a slave-driver--you are like the Roman emperors!" C1- Jane Eyre #Brontefest Day 1
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Alison @alisonjaye.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
“I resisted all the way: a new thing for me…” #brontefest
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Thomas Liam @thomasliam300.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
#Brontefest "This reproach of my dependence had become a vague sing-song in my ear; very painful and crushing, but only half intelligible." "Superstition was with me at that moment; but it was not yet her hour for complete victory." So good!
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Elizabeth Rosner @elizabethrosner.bsky.social · 15h
jweekly.com/2026/09/30/2...
jweekly.com
Elizabeth Rosner reflects on 25 years since ‘Speed of Light’
At a Lafayette talk, Elizabeth Rosner traced her path from debut novel "The Speed of Light" through poetry and nonfiction on Holocaust memory.
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Alison @alisonjaye.bsky.social · 14h
Despite all, Jane has a sense of humor. “Abbot, I think, gave me credit for being a sort of infantine Guy Fawkes.” #brontefest
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Lisa C. Hayden @lizoksbooks.bsky.social · 12h
Week 1, Day/Ch3 #Brontefest Charlotte/Jane -Jane wakes up bewildered -Relief there's a stranger - Mr. Lloyd, the apothecary - not just scary usuals -J tells Mr. Lloyd her problems -She'd like schooling & is anxious, nervous -She asks Bessie (singer of sad song) for Gulliver's Travels -Welsh rabbit
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Lisa C. Hayden @lizoksbooks.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Week 1, Day 2 #Brontefest Charlotte/Jane -Jane (described by Bessie as "like a mad cat") is restrained & brought to the red-room -Which reminds me of The Shining... -More of John's cruelty revealed -Jane doesn't understand why she has to suffer; she doesn't belong -Chapter ends w/a "species of fit"
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Punctured Lines @puncturedlines.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Overwintered is scheduled to be released in February, 2027, and you can preorder it, which helps both writers and their publishers. triohousepress.myshopify.com/products/pre...
triohousepress.myshopify.com
Pre-order: Overwintered by Elina Katrin
Elina Katrin's Overwintered is a brilliant debut collection that deftly examines the space between Syrian, Russian, and American cultures. Navigating immigration, the book moves through the fractured ...
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Punctured Lines @puncturedlines.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
This hybridity is evident in the mixture of languages, as she incorporates Russian and Arabic into her English-language poetry to reflect her multiple identities. The three poems featured below showcase these themes. puncturedlines.com/2026/09/25/e...
puncturedlines.com
Elina Katrin’s Overwintered: Three Poems
Today we are featuring poems from Elina Katrin’s collection Overwintered (Trio House Press, 2027). Katrin is a Syrian-Russian immigrant poet who lives in Los Angeles. Her poems are characteri…
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Olga Zilberbourg @olgaz.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
This book is both lyrical and tells a unique and rather sad story of migration. As the world rebuilds its walls, those of us with families elsewhere become ever so trapped and disconnected. It's good to have these poems for companionship and solace.
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Yelena Furman @yelenafurman.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Down Pacific Coast Highway. It was hard to capture, but the waves were big. LA is an amazing place.
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Lisa C. Hayden @lizoksbooks.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
#Brontefest Week 1: Charlotte's Jane Eyre Greetings, Brontë readers! Here's an odd schedule for Week 1. Chapter lengths are uneven so read as you wish. And the print in my book is teeny: I hope this isn't too much for the week! Sept28: Ch1 Sept29: Ch2 Sept30: Ch3 Oct1: Ch4 Oct2: Ch5 Oct3: Ch6
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Yelena Furman @yelenafurman.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
ICYMI, with many thanks to @olgaz.bsky.social for help with editing and technology.
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Cynthia Gómez @cynthiasaysboo.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
This event is tomorrow, friends!
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Olga Zilberbourg @olgaz.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
In her poems, Elina Katrin beautifully captures the multicultural immigrant experience. She begins with her name, showing the way her Russian and Syrian roots weave together in three syllables that to many in her adopted country continue to be inscrutable.
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Yelena Furman @yelenafurman.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Now on the blog. Thank you @olgaz.bsky.social for the editing help.
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New Vessel Press @newvesselpress.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
MY DREADFUL BODY, by Egana Djabbarova and translated by @lizoksbooks.bsky.social, longlisted for National Book Award. @nationalbook.bsky.social newvesselpress.com/books/my-dre...
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Olga Zilberbourg @olgaz.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
this is me realizing that the Russian term for the "coven" of witches -- шабаш -- is really a Jewish Shabbat. So "a Shabbat gathering of witches." The word was first used in this way in XIV century in the Alps and somehow migrated to Russia...
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Paperpills 💊🇵🇸❤️ @paperpills10.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Throat: Those pieces of jewelry bore messages from one woman to another, telling of a husband's love, of an engagement, of an argument, or of redemption after guilt. #Djabbarova26 #MyDreadfulBody
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Paperpills 💊🇵🇸❤️ @paperpills10.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
When she was sure there were no witnesses, my paternal grandmother would whisper a nocturnal prayer: the words bumped into one another as if they were clumped prayer beads that then skittered down through her voice box. #Djabbarova26 #MyDreadfulBody Prayer: Qiyam al-Layl-standing during the night
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Paperpills 💊🇵🇸❤️ @paperpills10.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
They felt better in the morning after the prayer because it seemed as if the words that had been released into the world took that burden with them. I often heard my mother pray at night. #Djabbarova26 #MyDreadfulBody
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Lisa C. Hayden @lizoksbooks.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Hello, Brontë sister readers -- #brontefest will finally start on Sept 28! A bit of information: We'll read all three sisters' novels, starting with Charlotte's Jane Eyre. We'll read about 50-60 pages a week with a flexible schedule; there will be breaks between books. All are welcome to join us!
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Barbara McVeigh @barbaramcveigh.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
How to choose? There are gems in all of the parts!
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Andrea Meador Smith @andreamsmith.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I’m only halfway through, but so far, I like the chapter about hands the best. It’s the one that made me really reflect on my mother, aunts, grandmothers, and how they paved the way so I could use my hands to hold books and write 🙏🏻
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Paperpills 💊🇵🇸❤️ @paperpills10.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Egana has a question for us!!! Check out: #Djabbarova26 #MyDreadfulBody www.instagram.com/reel/DdWTOuu...
instagram.com
Instagram
Create an account or log in to Instagram - Share what you're into with the people who get you.
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Paperpills 💊🇵🇸❤️ @paperpills10.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Could a swimsuit really make a woman depraved or unworthy of respect? just as they couldn't stop existing as the objects of social pressure, others' desires, and male power. #Djabbarova26 #MyDreadfulBody
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Paperpills 💊🇵🇸❤️ @paperpills10.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I decided that after the operation I had to buy myself some red high heeled shoes that clacked when I walked. 👠👠👠 #Djabbarova26 #MyDreadfulBody
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Catherine Eaton @sparrowpost.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
There’s something so curiously heartwarming about this book. Somehow cheerful? This paired with the great suffering, generational pain, and violence running throughout makes it very unusual. You did a great job translating throughout! Such great word choices/turns of phrases.
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Catherine Eaton @sparrowpost.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Absolutely brilliant read! Thank you so much for your translation, @lizoksbooks.bsky.social. It's way up there with Three Apples Fell From the Sky for me. #MyDreadfulBody #Djabbarova26
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Catherine Eaton @sparrowpost.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Unlike my girlfriends and others around me, however, my glasses—like books—never betrayed me. They always waited for me to return to their world when I opened up another book or took them off my nightstand; they waited for me to open my eyes again. Egana Djabbaraova, My Dreadful Body
Cover of My Dreadful Body
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Ilze Duarte @ilzeduarte.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
There's still ti.e to register!
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Barbara McVeigh @barbaramcveigh.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
And this sentence made me cry: “I liked it most of all when he [my father] smiled, but I still feared I’d be hit and flinched whenever he held out his hands to hug me. I knew too well what his hands were capable of since I knew their strength and their merciless” (62) #MyDreadfulBody #Djabbarova26
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Thomas Liam @thomasliam300.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
#Djabbarova26 #MyDreadfulBody "Children became more than their own childish bodies..." "...life adds all kinds of people into its soup, tossing in spices without asking who likes what." (I love this line.)
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Andrea Meador Smith @andreamsmith.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
My Dreadful Body, chapter VI: Hands. “A woman’s hands were always supposed to be busy—only a man’s hands were entitled to be carefree… Any woman in our family knew her hands were not given to her for writing” 🤲 😬📚 #Djabbarova26 #MyDreadfulBody #WomenInTranslation
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Paperpills 💊🇵🇸❤️ @paperpills10.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
These phrases were unrelated to human love and were instead needed to demonstrate one's love for Allah, the Merciful and Compassionate. #Djabbarova26 #MyDreadfulBody
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Paperpills 💊🇵🇸❤️ @paperpills10.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
" At one time the tribe decided that love entailed the capacity for self-sacrifice, so its members determined that forgoing one's own body guaranteed the prosperity of the community. It also decided that only a knife plunged into flesh attests to love. #Djabbarova26 #MyDreadfulBody
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Paperpills 💊🇵🇸❤️ @paperpills10.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
My face was solidly hidden behind books in all the family photographs, which may be why Bibi called me *the Russian professor." #Djabbarova26 #MyDreadfulBody
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Paperpills 💊🇵🇸❤️ @paperpills10.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I'd become part of that language, but it was poisoning me like contaminted water, and the words burned like the bodies of plague victims, piercing my alien body, my Eastern woman's body, my Eastern woman's sickly, thickening body. How was I to speak of that body? #Djabbarova26 #MyDreadfulBody
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Paperpills 💊🇵🇸❤️ @paperpills10.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
My mother's tongue was sadness: it could be spoken in Russian, Azerbaijani, or Turkish, but it was invariably sad and it always had words for prayers, entreaties, and suras. though a sense of yearning was most important. #Djabbarova26 #MyDreadfulBody
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Paperpills 💊🇵🇸❤️ @paperpills10.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
There was always a sense of heartache in my mother's speech, as if this heartache were a stone at the very bottom of each of her sentences, though this was not simply heartache-it was heartache filled with doubt: What if I had done things differently? #Djabbarova26 #MyDreadfulBody Brutal!
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Paperpills 💊🇵🇸❤️ @paperpills10.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I liked singing more than speaking because music lent new meanings to words, dressing them in new clothes. Singing also meant adding beauty to meaning and immortalizing words. #Djabbarova26 #MyDreadfulBody
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Lisa C. Hayden @lizoksbooks.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Thank you to @newvesselpress.bsky.social for publishing my translation of Egana Djabbarova's My Dreadful Body. Our work together and the book itself mean a lot to me so it's especially gratifying to hear that My Dreadful Body made the National Book Award's longlist for Translated Literature!
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Cynthia Gómez @cynthiasaysboo.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
And now I get to say that Muñeca won the Octavia E. Butler award! And I got to be there in person:) This is the first time I've won anything for my writing, and I'm so happy.
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Ilze Duarte @ilzeduarte.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Don't ask me about untranslatability! My latest blog: www.ilzeduarteliterarytranslator.com/post/don-t-a... #literarytranslation #untranslatability #literarytranslationblog
ilzeduarteliterarytranslator.com
Don't ask me about untranslatability
There seems to be a great deal of interest in so-called untranslatable words. I have seen and heard several conversations and interviews in which translators are asked to provide examples of words that can’t be translated; some translators have obliged, while others have pushed back, however gently, against the very concept of untranslatability. I have been interviewed twice, and one more interview is coming out this fall. I haven’t been asked so far about untranslatable Portuguese words, and I
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David Hayden @seventydys.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Our Godhead Ingeborg Bachmann, ‘Message’
Message
Out of the corpse-warm foyer of the sky steps the sun.
There it is not the immortals, but rather the fallen, we perceive.
And brilliance doesn't trouble itself with decay.
Our Godhead, History, has ordered for us a grave from which there is no resurrection.
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petipaw @petipaw.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
After finishing the first 3 books with the #ForsyteSaga26 gang, I *needed* to know what happened to Soames and everyone so I threw myself into the next 3 novels from #TheForsyteSaga by John #Galsworthy… @lizoksbooks.bsky.social @yelenafurman.bsky.social @olgaz.bsky.social
The Forsyte Saga vol 2 and a cup of coffee
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Betty Books @bettybooks.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Happy Pub Day! Help us celebrate Betty's latest title, ANY KIND OF KNOWN TOMORROW by Leah De Forest. Order ANY KIND OF KNOWN TOMORROW NOW with the link in our bio or at www.wtawpress.org/product-page... VIRTUAL BOOK LAUNCH! Register via the QR code, the link in our bio, or at bit.ly/AKoKT-launch
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Thomas Liam @thomasliam300.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
#Djabbarova26 #MyDreadfulBody "All day long, the sound of her sewing machine, its pedal rhythmically hitting the floor, emerged from behind the closed door of her room." I found this chapter to be sad and beautiful. Women were silenced, constrained and diminished by the social order, but... 1.
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Andrea Meador Smith @andreamsmith.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
My Dreadful Body, chapter IV: Mouth. Opens with a bang: “The mouth was not intended for speaking. None of the women around me ever said what they genuinely wanted to say and none interrupted men’s conversations” 🫦🙊📚 #Djabbarova26 #MyDreadfulBody #WomenInTranslation
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