Odessa Reads Odessa: A Celebration Of The City’s Literary Heritage
On July 12th and 13th, a celebration of Odessa’s rich literary history will revive the public reading tradition and give a long-overdue tribute to...
Babel’s Extended Ode to Odessa
'Odessa' by Isaac Babel
Translated by Val Vinokur
Photo by Igor Sytnik
Odessa is a nasty town. Everybody knows this. Instead of saying “what’s the difference,” over...
The Escape
Translated from the Ukrainian by Reilly Costigan-Humes and Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler. “The Escape” was published in Andriy Lyubka’s 2016 book of short fiction “A...
Justice in Quotes
First I had dealings with Benya Krik, then with Lyubka Shneyveys. Do these words mean anything to you? Do they leave a taste in...
A Conversation About Contemporary Ukrainian Poetry With Ukraine’s Renowned Poet Serhiy Zhadan
Serhiy Zhadan’s youthful looks in his early 40’s are symbolic of this cult status among Ukraine’s younger generation. The events of the Maidan have...
Religion For The People
The writer Yulia Verba has recentlly published a very funny book of short stories “Spawn of the Moldavanka” which is set in the dilapidated...
An Excerpt from “By The Black Sea” by Mikhail Kapchinsky
This is an excerpt from the 1952 memoirs of the Odessa Film Studio’s legendary first director Mikhail Kapchinsky. The excerpt provides a remarkable historical...
Taking Isaac Babel to Canada
Hip Hop innovator ‘Socalled’ reflects on adapting Babel’s Odessa Tales for Canadian audiences – in Yiddish!
I had first discovered Babel’s writing by accident rummaging...
Eugene Ostashevsky On “The Life And Opinions Of DJ Spinoza”
Eugene Ostashevsky is an American poet who was born in Leningrad into a family partially deriving from Odessa. He is now living in Berlin....
The New Year In Moldavanka
The writer Yulia Verba has recently published a very funny book of short stories “Spawn of the Moldavanka” set in the dilapidated communal courtyards...
