Ilya Kaminsky

About the Author

Ilya Kaminsky is a Ukrainian-American poet, translator, and professor whose work explores the intersections of language, silence, and human resilience amid conflict and displacement. Born in Odessa in 1977, he became profoundly deaf as a child, an experience that profoundly shapes his poetry's emphasis on the unsaid and the unheard. Immigrating to the United States at age sixteen, Kaminsky has since taught at prestigious institutions including the University of Arkansas and Georgia State University. His acclaimed collections, Dancing in Odessa and Deaf Republic: Poems, have garnered international praise, including a National Book Award nomination for the latter, for their lyrical intensity and innovative forms that blend personal memoir with political urgency, establishing him as a vital voice in contemporary literature.