ilya kaminsky

Ilya Kaminsky is a poet who writes in English and Russian. He was born in Odessa, former USSR, in 1977, and arrived in the United States in 1993, when his family received asylum from the American government. He is the author of the collection Dancing in Odessa (2004), which was named the Best Poetry Book of 2004 by ForeWord Magazine. The collection also won the Whiting Writers Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Metcalf Award, the Dorset Prize, and the Ruth Lilly Fellowship given annually by Poetry magazine. The poet Jane Hirshfield, for Ploughshares magazine, writes that “This is an intricate, muscular, startlingly powerful collection, one that amazes by image and statement, by its shaped whole, and by the sheer scope of its poetic observation.” Kaminsky has worked at several legal non-profits, such as the National Immigration Law Center and Bay Area Legal Aid. He has also served as a Writer-In-Residence at Phillips Exeter Academy and has taught poetry at numerous literary centers. He currently teaches in the graduate writing program at San Diego State University.