iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Punctured Lines @puncturedlines.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Enjoy poems from Elina Katrin’s collection Overwintered (@triohousepress.org, 2027) -- full poems available on Punctured Lines. Katrin is a Syrian-Russian immigrant poet who lives in Los Angeles. Her poems are characterized by themes of immigration, dislocation, and cultural hybridity.

Dark text on pale green background and book cover on the right.

Author portrait and book cover. Text copied from the post.

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Punctured Lines @puncturedlines.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Maxim Matusevich’s fiction is filled with people crossing borders—between countries, languages, identities, and versions of the past. Svetlana Satchkova interviewed him about his debut story collection and unlikely path to fiction thru immigration and academia. Read on the blog and buy the book!

Light blue background with a brown text box, two author portraits and a book cover.

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Punctured Lines @puncturedlines.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Alina Adams and Irena Smith happened to have crossed paths as newly arrived immigrant children in the U.S., and now they both have come out with new books. Check out their conversation on Punctured Lines that touches upon their immigrant childhood, the USSR and post-Soviet migrations --

A poster with author portraits as children on the left and book covers on the right.

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Punctured Lines @puncturedlines.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

The publication of Egana Djabbarova's My Dreadful Body by @newvesselpress.bsky.social is an important contribution to feminist russophone literature in English translation. We’re diving deeper into the context of this remarkable book in our interview w its translator, @lizoksbooks.bsky.social.

Two author pictures next to a book cover.

Dark text on a light background next to a book cover.

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Punctured Lines @puncturedlines.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Read an excerpt from Svetlana Satchkova’s English-language debut, THE UNDEAD: A Novel of Modern Russia, published earlier this year by @melvillehouse.bsky.social. A story of an aspiring Moscow filmmaker, who makes an arthouse horror movie and then finds herself arrested and prosecuted.

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Punctured Lines @puncturedlines.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Natalie Oceanheart's LIFE BEYOND FEAR: A UKRAINIAN WOMAN'S MEMOIR is written by a survivor as well as a trained psychologist who aims to help people by sharing her story. Read @katyacengel.bsky.social's interview with Oceanheart on Punctured Lines. Link below. #Ukraine #memoir #survivor #book

Block of text across the top, followed by author pictures on the left side and book cover on the right of the slide.

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Punctured Lines @puncturedlines.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

Natalya Sukhonos's third collection of poems, SUNLIGHT TRAPPED IN STONE (@greenwriterspress.bsky.social) is the subject of her conversation with fellow immigrant poet from Odesa, Ukraine @valeriebandura.bsky.social. Read on PuncturedLines.com.

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Punctured Lines @puncturedlines.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

How beautiful are these book covers! In Baltimore next week? Don't miss his one-of-a-kind reading that brings together poets, prose writers, and translators from Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet countries who now make their homes across the United States.

Background: Blue with a black X in the lower right corner
Foreground: Words in black read : Resistance + Reinvention
Words in Yellow Read: Eastern European Voices
March 6, 7:00-9:30 pm
Library Nineteen
606 S. Ann St, Baltimore MD, 21231

Words in white read : A benefit reading for Ukraine
Words in white read:This one-of-a-kind reading brings together writers from Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet countries who now make their homes across the United States. Taking place during the 2026 AWP Conference, the event celebrates a growing circle of poets, prose writers, and translators from complex, cross-cultural identities whose work is shaped by displacement and immigration, survival and resilience.

Featuring
Words in white read: Alina Adams, Valerie Bandura, Svetlana Binshtok, Daniel Blokh, Katie Farris, Katarzyna Jakubiak, Victoria Juharyan, Andrea Jurjevic, Ilya Kaminsky, Julia Kolchinsky, Maria Kuznetsova, Ellen Litman, Olga Livshin, olga mikolaivna, Asya Partan, Irina Reyn, Ena Selimović, Lucy Silbaugh, Lana Spendl, Alina Stefanescu, Natalya Sukhonos, Vlada Teper, Katherine E. Young, Tatsiana Zamirovskaya, Olga Zilberbourg, and Lena Zycinsky.

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Punctured Lines @puncturedlines.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

Ok, now you can marvel at the FULL list of the participants! (sorry to all, we're clearly overwhelmed by the awesomeness of this upcoming event.)

Background: Blue
Foreground: Word in yellow reads: Featuring
Words in white read: Valerie Bandura, Svetlana Binshtok, Daniel Blokh, Katie Farris, Katarzyna Jakubiak, Victoria Juharyan, Andrea Jurjevic, Ilya Kaminsky, Julia Kolchinsky, Maria Kuznetsova, Ellen Litman, Olga Livshin, olga mikolaivna, Asya Partan, Irina Reyn, Ena Selimović, Lucy Silbaugh, Alina Sivorinovsky Wickham, Lana Spendl, Alina Stefanescu, Natalya Sukhonos, Vlada Teper, Katherine E. Young, Tatsiana Zamirovskaya, Olga Zilberbourg, and Lena Zycinsky.

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Punctured Lines @puncturedlines.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

Baltimore, get ready! This one-of-a-kind reading brings together writers from Eastern Europe who now make their homes across the United States. We're coming together during #AWP26 to share our work in support of Ukraine. www.eventbrite.com/e/eastern-eu... #reading #event #BookSky

Background: Blue with a black X in the lower right corner
Foreground: Words in yellow read : Resistance + Reinvention
Words in black read : Eastern European Voices
Words in white read:
March 6, 7:00-9:30 pm
Library Nineteen
606 S. Ann St, Baltimore MD, 21231

Background: Yellow
Foreground: Words in black read: This one-of-a-kind reading brings together writers from Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet countries who now make their homes across the United States. Taking place during the 2026 AWP Conference, the event celebrates a growing circle of poets, prose writers, and translators from complex, cross-cultural identities whose work is shaped by displacement and immigration, survival and resilience.

Background: Black
Foreground: Words in white read: More essential than ever, nuanced storytelling is our compass toward understanding and community. Writing from and beyond histories marked by authoritarianism and censorship, the authors center free expression, creative freedom, and democratic dialogue. Through stories of reinvention, loss, and belonging, we build cultural and intergenerational bridges, reclaiming the power of connection and voice.
Words in yellow read: This event is a fundraiser for Ukraine

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Punctured Lines @puncturedlines.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

NADEZHDA IN THE DARK A novel-in-verse by Yelena Moskovich available now from Dzanc Books Read the excerpt on puncturedlines.com (ed. @yelenafurman.bsky.social and @olgaz.bsky.social)

everybody knows
Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Chekhov, and if you’re bookish
Bulgakov and Gogol and Pasternak,
but
who’s talking about Margarita Khemlin,
who died a handful of years back
and left us with a masterpiece,
Klotsvog,

sometimes at night, when Nadya has already fallen asleep next to me
and the blinds on the slanted window of our bedroom are not fully
shut, I lie on my back and
glimpse the broad nighttime sky,
a dark milky sky,
a pauper’s sky,
a dreamer’s sky,
a prisoner’s sky,
and I think about the sea
and sailors lying in their cots,
like me
except alone,
looking up at a broad nighttime sky,
a dark milky sky,
a doomed sky,
as they think about land,

I won’t ruin the whole story,
but in the beginning, in Klotsvog, the main character, Maya,
—who’s evacuated with her family from the little town of Ostyor in
Ukraine when she’s very little, where the then-thriving Jewish population
is near erased—and skip ahead, the past is the past,
she’s trying it make it in the big city,
but, of course, she falls for the wrong type of guy
and has a baby too young,

Nadezhda in the dark
A Novel-IN-VERSE
by Yelena Moskovich
available now from Dzanc books

Read the rest of the excerpt on puncturedlines.com

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Punctured Lines @puncturedlines.bsky.social · 13/01/2026

Today, we're celebrating the publication of Yelena Moskovich's NADEZHDA IN THE DARK, a novel-in-verse brought to us in the US by Dzanc Books. A story of a relationship, this book offers a review of recent history with Russia's war against Ukraine at the center. #booksky 1/2

Book cover against mossy brick background.
The cover features a partially shaded female face, lying horizontally across the page.
Book info: Nadezhda in the Dark by Yelena Moskovich

A screenshot from the front page of Punctured Lines, featuring the title of the blog and the blog post.
Punctured Lines

Post-Soviet Literature in and outside the Former Soviet Union

“everybody knows . . .” An Excerpt from Nadezhda in the Dark by Yelena Moskovich

A screenshot from the blog post:
When asked to contribute our responses to this book, Yelena Furman said:

“Brimming with references from Russian and Ukrainian literatures to Alla Pugacheva and the Moscow 1990s gay club scene, Nadezhda in the Dark is a poetic disquisition on global history and self-identity. Discussions of Soviet anti-Semitism and the war in Ukraine merge with explorations of immigration and queer love. In language simultaneously lyrical and sharp, Moskovich shows how the personal and political, the present and past, are inextricably linked in ways that are often traumatic but also occasionally hopeful.”

Olga Zilberbourg said: “The Iliad for post-Soviet Jewish dykes . . . Moskovich’s voice commands our attention as it tells – breathlessly, passionately, mixing humor with earnestness – a story about two women whose Soviet roots both unite them and make their relationship impossible. Emotional pitch in this book is turned all the way up! I loved it.”

A screenshot from the blog post:
* * *

everybody knows
Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Chekhov, and if you’re bookish
Bulgakov and Gogol and Pasternak,
but
who’s talking about Margarita Khemlin,
who died a handful of years back
and left us with a masterpiece,
Klotsvog,

sometimes at night, when Nadya has already fallen asleep next to me
and the blinds on the slanted window of our bedroom are not fully
shut, I lie on my back and
glimpse the broad nighttime sky,
a dark milky sky,
a pauper’s sky,
a dreamer’s sky,

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Punctured Lines @puncturedlines.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

San Francisco Bay Area: We’re a group of immigrant writers and translators born in the former USSR, here to push back against the growing threat to freedom of expression. Come to our Lit Crawl event at Ruth’s Table (3160 21st Street) on October 25, 2025, 5 pm. @litquake.org #BayArea

A flyer displaying ten author's photos alongside three quarters perimeter. In the center left, in black, title of the event:
OWNING FEAR, REACHING FOR FREEDOM: POST-SOVIET WRITERS AND TRANSLATORS SPEAK OUT
on the right, in red: LIT CRAWL SAN FRANCISCO
Below, in Blue:
Sat OCTOBER 25TH 5-6 PM
AT RUTH'S TABLE
2160 21st Street
Sponsored by California Humanities and Ruth's Table

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Punctured Lines @puncturedlines.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

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...

words on a page: I have a tricky relationship with nostalgia. It’s a complicated thing when you’re a child of empire, more complicated when you’re a child of two. I was born in Moscow to a mother with Siberian roots and a father with Georgian roots, whose own father was one of many Soviet Koreans living on Sakhalin Island before being forcibly deported, under Stalin’s regime, in cattle cars to rural Kazakhstan and other parts of Central Asia (my grandfather was the only one of his siblings to survive this displacement). After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, my parents and I moved to the United States. I grew up in Arizona, then New York, going to summer camp and raising Neopets and marveling at the novelty of AOL Instant Messenger, and I didn’t give much thought then to all the things I write about now: empire, patriarchy, all the terrifying ways a repressive state can assert its power. These days, it seems as though I think of little else.

Which isn’t to say I’m immune to nostal

words on a page: This species of nostalgia relies on a warped glorification of the past, with aims to influence the future. In Russia, it might look like Putin’s reinstatement of the Soviet national anthem in 2000; or, in more recent years, the steady reinstallation of monuments to Joseph Stalin throughout the country, monuments which had been systematically removed starting in the 1950s with the de-Stalinization reforms. In the States, it might look like a longing to return to “simpler, better times,” which, on its face, recalls some idyllic bygone era when it was socially acceptable to ride your bike to a friend’s house without calling first, to knock on their door, ask them to come out and play—and who doesn’t want that? But beneath this rosy vision often churns an undercurrent of traditional values about marriage, childrearing, and the nuclear family, along with anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment.

“Back in my day, we would…”

“Back in my day, we wouldn’t…”

Remember the “good times,” these his

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Punctured Lines @puncturedlines.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

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...

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Punctured Lines @puncturedlines.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

2025 Books by Post-Soviet Authors -- Thanks to @sashavasilyuk.bsky.social for keeping track of all the upcoming 2025 books by immigrant writers from the former USSR, writing in English and publishing in the US. Take a look -- it's quite a bounty of riches! Authors include: @shustry.bsky.social,

A screenshot from the website PuncturedLines.com. A banner with old manuscript and samizdat pages at the top followed by the website content below. The opening post lines read:

2025 Books by Post-Soviet Authors
February 11, 2025 ~ Sasha Vasilyuk ~ Edit"2025 Books by Post-Soviet Authors"
2025 is going to be a big year for books written by immigrant authors hailing from the Soviet Union who now call North America home. Since 2021, I’ve kept a running list of books coming out from our community as a way to keep tabs and, frankly, because no one else was doing it. Last year, when my own debut novel came out, there were only 7 books out from our community, a couple of them paperback editions of 2023 novels. This year, however, we have twelve new titles, plus three books–including my own–being released in paperback. A recent record! I imagine the war in Ukraine might have had something to do with this increased output as several of the authors below engage with the war and the resulting refugee crisis.

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