Ilya Kaminsky

Ilya Kaminsky (born April 18, 1977) is a hard-of-hearing, USSR-born, Ukrainian-Russian-Jewish-American poet, critic, translator and professor. He is best-known for his poetry collections Dancing in Odessa and Deaf Republic, which have earned him several awards.

Kaminsky was born in Odessa, former Soviet Union (now Ukraine), on April 18, 1977 to a Jewish family. He became hard of hearing at the age of four due to mumps. He began to write poetry as a teenager in Odessa, publishing a chapbook in Russian entitled The Blessed City. His family was granted political asylum to live in the United States in 1993 due to anti-semitism in Ukraine. He started to write poems in English in 1994.

His first book in English, Dancing in Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004), received several literary awards.

Kaminsky has a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Georgetown University and a J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. He has worked as a professor at the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts since 2018.

• 2019 Academy of American Poets fellowship
• 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship
• 2008 Lannan Literary Fellowship
• 2005 Whiting Award
• 2005 American Academy of Arts and Letters Metcalf Award
• 2004 ForeWord (magazine) Book of the Year Award in Poetry
• 2002 The Dorset Prize
• 2001 Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship

Poetry Collections

• Dancing in Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004) ISBN 978-1-932195-12-5
• Музыка народов ветра (Ailuros Publishing, 2012; translated into Russian by Anastassiya Afanassieva) ISBN 978-0-9838762-8-1
• Deaf Republic (Graywolf, 2019)

Chapbooks

• Musica Humana (Chapiteau Press, 2002) ISBN 978-1-931498-32-6
• Бродячие музыканты / Travelling Musicians (Moscow, Yunost, 2007; bilingual edition with Polina Barskova's Russian translation) ISBN 5-88653-086-X

Editor

• "Ecco Anthology of International Poetry" (Harper Collins, 2010)