Beck Series: Poets Ilya Kaminsky and Katie Farris

The Beck Series welcomes poets Ilya Kaminsky and Katie Farris.

Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa, former Soviet Union, in 1977, and arrived in the U.S. in 1993, when his family was granted asylum. He is the author of “Deaf Republic” (Graywolf Press, 2019) and “Dancing In Odessa” (Tupelo Press, 2004) and is the co-editor and co-translator of many other books. A finalist for the National Book Award, Kaminsky’s work has won the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award, the Whiting Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, and Poetry magazine’s Levinson Prize. It was also shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Neustadt International Literature Prize, and T. S. Eliot Prize (UK). He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Fellowship, an Academy of American Poets’ Fellowship, and an NEA Fellowship. He currently teaches in Princeton and lives in New Jersey. 

Katie Farris is a poet, writer of hybrid forms, and translator. Her most recent book is “Standing in the Forest of Being Alive” (Alice James Books, 2023), which Publishers Weekly named one of the Top Ten Books of 2023. She is also the author of the chapbook “A Net to Catch My Body in its Weaving,” which won the Chad Walsh Poetry Award from Beloit Poetry Journal. Her earlier collection is “boysgirls” (Tupelo Press), a hybrid-form book. Her awards include the Pushcart Prize, Orison Prize, and Anne Halley Prize from Massachusetts Review. She also is the award-winning translator of several books of poetry from the French, Ukrainian, Chinese, and Russian. In addition to her poetry and translations, Farris writes prose about cancer, the body, and its relationship to writing, such as in her recent, widely circulated essay in Oprah Daily. She holds degrees from UC Berkeley and Brown University, and currently lives and teaches in New Jersey.