Valzhyna Mort

Valzhyna Mort

Fellow: Awarded 2022
Field of Study: Poetry

Competition: US & Canada

Valzhyna Mort is the author of three poetry collections, Factory of Tears (2008), Collected Body (2011), both from Copper Canyon Press, and Music for the Dead and Resurrected (2020) from FSG, named one of the best poetry book of 2020 by The New York Times, winner of the International Griffin Poetry Prize and the UNT Rilke Prize. Mort is a recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, American Academy in Rome, the Lannan Foundation, and the Amy Clampitt Foundation. Her essays and poetry have appeared in The Best American Poetry, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Poetry, Poetry Review, Granta, The White Review, The Baffler, etc. With Ilya Kaminsky and Katie Farris, Mort co-edited Gossip and Metaphysics: Russian Modernist Poems and Prose (Tupelo Press, 2014). As a translator, she has published Air Raid: Selected Poetry of Polina Barskova (Ugly Duckling, 2021) and Motherfield: Poetry and Belarusian Protest Diary by Julia Cimafiejeva, co-translated with Hanif Abdurraqib (Deep Vellum 2022). In 2020, Mort wrote and narrated a radio documentary Belarus Across the Barricades for the BBC News World Service. Born in Minsk, Belarus, Mort works as an Associate Professor at Cornell University, and writes in English and Belarusian.

Photo Credit: Tanya Kapitonova

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