"Stepanova’s finely crafted debut follows a woman’s lifelong efforts to better understand her ancestors, Russian Jews whose stories fascinated her as a child growing up in the Soviet Union...[an] admirable cross-genre project will intrigue fans of erudite autofiction."
― Publishers Weekly

"A daring combination of family history and roving cultural analysis...a kaleidoscopic, time-shuffling look at one family of Russian Jews throughout a fiercely eventful century."
― John Williams, The New York Times

"A book to plunge into. 'Everyone else's ancestors had taken part in history' writes Stepanova; building itself via accumulation, these chapters become an important testimony to the cultural and political lives of the people held beneath the surface of the tides of history."
― Andrew McMillan

"Stepanova has given new life to the skaz technique of telling a story through the scrambled speech of an unreliable narrator, using manic wordplay and what one critic called ‘a carnival of images.’"
― Los Angeles Review of Books

Maria Stepanova, born in Moscow, is a poet, essayist, and journalist, and editor in chief of the online newspaper Colta. She is the author of over ten poetry collections, three of which have recently been translated and published in English: War of the Beasts and Animals (Bloodaxe Books, 2021), In Memory of Memory (New Directions, 2021), and The Voice Over (Columbia University Press, 2021), which includes a selection of Stepanova’s poetry and essays originally published in Russia between 1996 and 2016.

The masterful English translation is by Sasha Dugdale, a British poet, playwright, and translator. Dugdale has translated Russian poetry and drama, including Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. From 2012 to 2017, she served as editor of Modern Poetry in Translation, and she is co-director of the Winchester Poetry Festival.

Stepanova will present her book in conversation with Zarina Zabrisky, the author of three short story collections and a novel "We, Monsters" (Numina Press, 2014). Zabrisky's work appeared in nine countries in over fifty literary magazines and anthologies, including The Nervous Breakdown, A Capella Zoo, Eleven Eleven, The Rumpus, Guernica, and received nominations and awards, including 2013 Acker Awards for Avant-Garde Excellence. Zabrisky runs literary and cultural programs at Globus Books.

This event is in English and will be held on Zoom on June 7, 2021, at 10 am PST (SF), 1 pm EST (NY), 20.00 (Moscow.)