Dmitry Bykov and Ian Singleton in Conversation

Dmitry Bykov, major Russian literary figure, is the author of more than 90 books. His newest is VZ: Portrait Against the Background of the Nation (English translation, 2024), a meditation in fiction on the significance of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

An outspoken critic of the Putin regime, Bykov and his work are banned from publication, media and university classrooms in Russia. He narrowly survived an assassination attempt by poisoning in April 2019.

Ian Singleton, novelist, Russian translator, and instructor in UAlbany’s Writing & Critical Inquiry Program (WCI), is the author of Two Big Differences (2021), a novel about two friends, Zina and Valinka, who are caught up in a wave of civil unrest during the 2014 Maidan Uprising in Ukraine— a mass protest against government corruption and Russian political influence. Writer-in-exile Mikhael Iossel called it, “Brightly original, structurally inventive, thoughtful and wise.”

Recorded Monday, September 9, 2024, at the University at Albany.

Cosponsored by UAlbany’s Writing & Critical Inquiry Program (WCI) and the English Department’s Creative Writing Program and Young Writers Project.