UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Award-winning poet Ilya Kaminsky will deliver the 24th annual Emily Dickinson Lecture at 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 21, in Paterno Library’s Foster Auditorium on the University Park campus. The lecture, which will feature readings from Kaminsky’s works, is free and open to the public.

Kaminsky was born in Odessa (in the former Soviet Union) in 1977 and has lived in the United States since his family received asylum in 1993. He is the author of “Deaf Republic” (Graywolf Press, 2019) and “Dancing In Odessa” (Tupelo Press, 2004) and co-editor and co-translator of many other books. His work was a finalist for the National Book Award and has won the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award, the Whiting Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, and Poetry magazine’s Levinson Prize; it was also shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Neustadt International Literature Prize, and T.S. Eliot Prize (U.K.).

Kaminsky has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Fellowship, an Academy of American Poets’ Fellowship, and an NEA Fellowship. He currently teaches in Princeton and lives in New Jersey.

The Emily Dickinson Lectureship in American Poetry is made possible through the generosity of Penn State alumni George and Barbara Kelly, with additional support provided by the Penn State Department of English. Additional information about the Dickinson Lecture and other 2024-25 events hosted by the department can be found at creativewriting.psu.edu.