Mikhail Ayzenberg is a poet, critic and essayist. After graduating from the Moscow Architecture Institute he worked as an architect in conservation projects. Having published none of his works in the Soviet time, he has released nine collections of poems and three books of essays on contemporary. Russian poetry since the fall the Soviet Union. He has taught in the School of Contemporary Art at the Russian State University for the Humanities and overseen the poetry publishing at OGI, one of the main key projects promoting poetry in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Starting from 2006 he curated the poetry program at Novoye Izdatelstvo. He is a recipient of Andrey Belyi (2003), Znamya and Strelets awards and has received a grant from Iosif Brodsky Memorial Fund (2011).
Dmitriy Vedenyapin is a poet and translator, author of six collections of poetry. He studied at the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages, and has translated poetry (Karl Krolow and Thomas Hardy) and prose (Isaac Bashevis Singer, Michael Cunningham) from English, French and German. He is the recipient of Moscovskiy Schet award (2010. For Between the Closet and the Sky) and as received a grant from Iosif Brodsky Memorial Fund (2011).
Gennadiy Kanevskiy is a poet, author of six books. He studied in the Moscow Institute of Radio Engineering, Electronics and Automation, and works as an editor. He has published his poetry on the Internet, in Znamya and Arion magazines and is a recipient of Moskovskiy nablyudatel award.
Fyodor Svarovskiy is a poet and journalist, author of four poetry collections. He emigrated from the USSR at the age of 19 and moved to Denmark. Having been granted political asylum, he settled in Aarhus, and later lived in Copenhagen until his return to Moscow in 1997. He has worked as a journalist for television and printed media, and has published his works in printed and online editions. He was granted Moskovskiy Schet prize for his book Everyone Wants to Be a Robot.
Viktor Koval is a poet and artist, author of four collections of poetry. He studied in the Moscow State University of Printing Arts and works as an illustrator for books, magazines and newspapers.
Yevgenia Lavut is a poet, author of two collections of poems. She studied Philology at the Moscow State University and has worked as a journalist, translator, English teacher, and editor at Textonly.
Lev Rubinstein is a poet and essayist, author of over 10 books of poetry and essays. He studied Philology at the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute and has worked in the institute’s library. He started working in journalism in the 1990s and was a critic at Itogi magazine from 1996 to 2001. In the 1970s he has invented poetry on cards, and published for books in this new genre. He is a recipient of Andrey Belyi and NOS awards (1999) and Liberty Prize of Russian émigré writers.
The hosts for the evening are the founders of Kulturnaya Initsiativa, poets Danil Faizov and Yuriy Tsvetkov.