Overview
Valzhyna Mort is a poet and translator born in Minsk, Belarus, and she writes in English and Belarusian. She is the author of three poetry collections, Factory of Tears (Copper Canyon Press 2008), Collected Body (Copper Canyon Press 2011) and, mostly recently, Music for the Dead and Resurrected (FSG, 2020), named one of the best poetry book of 2020 by The New York Times and The NPR, and the winner of the 2020 International Griffin Poetry Prize and the 2022 UNT Rilke Prize.
Mort is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy in Rome, the Lannan Foundation, and the Amy Clampitt Foundation. Her work has been honored with the Bess Hokin Prize from Poetry. Her work has been shortlisted for the Forward Prize for the Best Single Poem, and has appeared in Best American Poetry, The New Yorker, Poetry, Poetry Review, Poetry International, Granta, and many more. Mort translates between English, Belarusian, Russian, Ukrainian, and Polish. She has received the Gulf Coast Prize in Translation and the National Endowment for the Arts grant in translation for her work on Polina Barskova’s book of selected poems, Air Raid (Ugly Duckling 2021). With Ilya Kaminsky and Katie Farris, Mort co-edited Gossip and Metaphysics: Russian Modernist Poems and Prose. Valzhyna Mort’s poetry collections have come out in translation in Germany, Sweden and Ukraine, while single poems have been translated into a dozen of languages. Outside the US, she has received the Burda Prize for Eastern European authors (Germany) and the Crystal of Vilenica prize (Slovenia).
Research Focus
- Contemporary World Poetry
- Literary Translation
- Creative Writing
In the news
- Sigrid Nunez reading Nov. 7 concludes fall 2024 Zalaznick series
- Poet and sportswriter Rowan Ricardo Phillips to read Oct. 17
- ‘Accomplished’ poet and essayist to kick off 2024 Zalaznick Reading Series
- Paying a price to speak out, dissident writers help preserve freedoms
- NPR’s David Folkenflik ’91 to host ‘Dissident Writers’ event
- Faculty poet Valzhyna Mort reads her poem, “In the Woods of Language, She Collects Beautiful Sticks”
- Sandeep Parmar, Zalaznick Distinguished Visiting Writer, to read Oct. 20
- Belarusian poet: Nobel Peace Prize win must galvanize support
- Fall 2022 Zalaznick Reading Series Features Global Voices
- Musicologist and poet awarded Guggenheim fellowships