Ilya Kaminsky, Lewis Center for the Arts

Director and Professor of Creative Writing (on leave Fall 2025)

Photo courtesy Ilya Kaminsky

About

Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odesa, Ukraine, in 1977, and arrived in the United States in 1993, when his family was granted asylum by the American government.

He is the author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa and co-editor and co-translator of many other books, including Ecco Anthology of International Poetry, and In the Hour of War: Poems from Ukraine.

Deaf Republic, published in 2019 by Graywolf Press, was The New York Times’ Notable Book for 2019 and was also named Best Book of 2019 by dozens of other publications, including Washington Post, Times Literary Supplement, The Telegraph, Publishers Weekly, The Guardian, Irish Times, Vanity Fair, Lithub, Library Journal, and New Statesman. The book has been adopted for stage in many theaters around the world, most recently in Royal Court Theater in London, Maribor Puppet Theater in Slovenia, and Dublin Theater Festival in Ireland.

Kaminsky’s work has won The Los Angeles Times Book Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Whiting Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Metcalf Award, Lannan Fellowship, Academy of American Poets’ Fellowship, USA Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and Poetry Magazine's Levinson Prize. His work has been shortlisted for the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, Neustadt International Literature Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize (UK).

In 2023 Kaminsky was named a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, and he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

His books have been translated into over 30 languages, and published in many countries including Brazil, Turkey, Iceland, the Netherlands, Germany, Ukraine, France, Mexico, Macedonia, Romania, and Spain. His poetry has earned several international awards including the Prix Alain Bosquet in France, the Premio Laudomia Bonanni in Italy, and China's Yinchuan International Poetry Prize.

In Ukraine, Kaminsky earned The Boris Dereviyanko "Ludi Dela" Civic Service award for his work in support of humanities during the war in the city of Odesa. In 2023, BBC aired To Odesa, his series of new essays about returning to Ukraine during the war.

Kaminsky was selected by BBC as “one of the 12 artists that changed the world.”