Sarah Valentine earned a PhD in Russian Literature from Princeton University and has received a research fellowship from the Templeton Foundation from Princeton’s Center for the Study of Religion, a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Writer in Residence Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. Her peer-reviewed articles have appeared in PMLA, Slavic and East European Journal and Poetics, and her translation from the Russian, Into the Snow: Selected Poems of Gennady Aygi was published by Wave Books in 2011. She teaches English and Comparative Literature at Northwestern University.

“Of the most important Russian poets of the late Soviet period (Brodsky, Vsevolod Nekrasov, Aygi), only Aygi was not Russian, but Chuvash. However, with his mentor Boris Pasternak’s encouragement, Aygi began to compose primarily in Russian, thereby opening his work to a broad international audience. Sarah Valentine’s astute and rich monograph, the first on Aygi in English, establishes Aygi’s preeminence in contemporary world poetry and reveals the importance of Chuvash language and culture for his Russian works. Aygi’s special background has given him a whole new vision of the world in some of the greatest Russian poetry of the last century."

Sarah Valentine earned a PhD in Russian Literature from Princeton University and has received a research fellowship from the Templeton Foundation from Princeton’s Center for the Study of Religion, a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Writer in Residence Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. Her peer-reviewed articles have appeared in PMLA, Slavic and East European Journal and Poetics, and her translation from the Russian, Into the Snow: Selected Poems of Gennady Aygi was published by Wave Books in 2011. She teaches English and Comparative Literature at Northwestern University.

“Of the most important Russian poets of the late Soviet period (Brodsky, Vsevolod Nekrasov, Aygi), only Aygi was not Russian, but Chuvash. However, with his mentor Boris Pasternak’s encouragement, Aygi began to compose primarily in Russian, thereby opening his work to a broad international audience. Sarah Valentine’s astute and rich monograph, the first on Aygi in English, establishes Aygi’s preeminence in contemporary world poetry and reveals the importance of Chuvash language and culture for his Russian works. Aygi’s special background has given him a whole new vision of the world in some of the greatest Russian poetry of the last century."

Sarah Valentine earned a PhD in Russian Literature from Princeton University and has received a research fellowship from the Templeton Foundation from Princeton’s Center for the Study of Religion, a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Writer in Residence Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. Her peer-reviewed articles have appeared in PMLA, Slavic and East European Journal and Poetics, and her translation from the Russian, Into the Snow: Selected Poems of Gennady Aygi was published by Wave Books in 2011. She teaches English and Comparative Literature at Northwestern University.

“Of the most important Russian poets of the late Soviet period (Brodsky, Vsevolod Nekrasov, Aygi), only Aygi was not Russian, but Chuvash. However, with his mentor Boris Pasternak’s encouragement, Aygi began to compose primarily in Russian, thereby opening his work to a broad international audience. Sarah Valentine’s astute and rich monograph, the first on Aygi in English, establishes Aygi’s preeminence in contemporary world poetry and reveals the importance of Chuvash language and culture for his Russian works. Aygi’s special background has given him a whole new vision of the world in some of the greatest Russian poetry of the last century."