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puncturedlines.bsky.social
Punctured Lines
@puncturedlines.bsky.social
150 followers 190 following 52 posts
Post-Soviet Literature in and outside the Former Soviet Union. Blog by Yelena Furman @yelenafurman.bsky.social and Olga Zilberbourg
@olgaz.bsky.social

http://puncturedlines.com
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Writing is the Closest We Will Ever Get to Time Travel: An Essay by Dana Kanafina
#booktwitter #writerscraft #margaretatwood #personalessay #writerslife #kazakhstan
Text on yellow background: In April of last year, my short story came out in Aina Journal, a Kazakhstani literary magazine for women. Text on yellow background: In the middle of the poetry club meeting, we always had a smoking break. I smoke sporadically, which I’m not very proud of, so I was outside the cafe where we held the club, at the bottom of the stairs, one hand hovering over a trash can. Text on yellow background: “They have sex in there,” he said then Text and image on yellow background. On the right, an image of the author Dana Kanafina. On the left, text: Writing is the Closest We Will Ever Get to Time Travel: A Guest Essay by Dana Kanafina Below, text: Read on PuncturedLines.com
January 29, 2026 at 6:46 PM
puncturedlines.bsky.social
NADEZHDA IN THE DARK

A novel-in-verse

by Yelena Moskovich

available now from Dzanc Books

Read the excerpt on puncturedlines.com
(ed. @yelenafurman.bsky.social and @olgaz.bsky.social)
everybody knows Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Chekhov, and if you’re bookish Bulgakov and Gogol and Pasternak, but who’s talking about Margarita Khemlin, who died a handful of years back and left us with a masterpiece, Klotsvog, sometimes at night, when Nadya has already fallen asleep next to me and the blinds on the slanted window of our bedroom are not fully shut, I lie on my back and glimpse the broad nighttime sky, a dark milky sky, a pauper’s sky, a dreamer’s sky, a prisoner’s sky, and I think about the sea and sailors lying in their cots, like me except alone, looking up at a broad nighttime sky, a dark milky sky, a doomed sky, as they think about land, I won’t ruin the whole story, but in the beginning, in Klotsvog, the main character, Maya, —who’s evacuated with her family from the little town of Ostyor in Ukraine when she’s very little, where the then-thriving Jewish population is near erased—and skip ahead, the past is the past, she’s trying it make it in the big city, but, of course, she falls for the wrong type of guy and has a baby too young, Nadezhda in the dark A Novel-IN-VERSE by Yelena Moskovich available now from Dzanc books Read the rest of the excerpt on puncturedlines.com
January 22, 2026 at 5:28 PM
puncturedlines.bsky.social
Today, we're celebrating the publication of Yelena Moskovich's NADEZHDA IN THE DARK, a novel-in-verse brought to us in the US by Dzanc Books. A story of a relationship, this book offers a review of recent history with Russia's war against Ukraine at the center.
#booksky
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Book cover against mossy brick background. The cover features a partially shaded female face, lying horizontally across the page. Book info: Nadezhda in the Dark by Yelena Moskovich A screenshot from the front page of Punctured Lines, featuring the title of the blog and the blog post. Punctured Lines Post-Soviet Literature in and outside the Former Soviet Union “everybody knows . . .” An Excerpt from Nadezhda in the Dark by Yelena Moskovich A screenshot from the blog post: When asked to contribute our responses to this book, Yelena Furman said: “Brimming with references from Russian and Ukrainian literatures to Alla Pugacheva and the Moscow 1990s gay club scene, Nadezhda in the Dark is a poetic disquisition on global history and self-identity. Discussions of Soviet anti-Semitism and the war in Ukraine merge with explorations of immigration and queer love. In language simultaneously lyrical and sharp, Moskovich shows how the personal and political, the present and past, are inextricably linked in ways that are often traumatic but also occasionally hopeful.” Olga Zilberbourg said: “The Iliad for post-Soviet Jewish dykes . . . Moskovich’s voice commands our attention as it tells – breathlessly, passionately, mixing humor with earnestness – a story about two women whose Soviet roots both unite them and make their relationship impossible. Emotional pitch in this book is turned all the way up! I loved it.” A screenshot from the blog post: * * * everybody knows Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Chekhov, and if you’re bookish Bulgakov and Gogol and Pasternak, but who’s talking about Margarita Khemlin, who died a handful of years back and left us with a masterpiece, Klotsvog, sometimes at night, when Nadya has already fallen asleep next to me and the blinds on the slanted window of our bedroom are not fully shut, I lie on my back and glimpse the broad nighttime sky, a dark milky sky, a pauper’s sky, a dreamer’s sky,
January 13, 2026 at 10:01 PM
puncturedlines.bsky.social
San Francisco Bay Area: We’re a group of immigrant writers and translators born in the former USSR, here to push back against the growing threat to freedom of expression. Come to our Lit Crawl event at Ruth’s Table (3160 21st Street) on October 25, 2025, 5 pm.
@litquake.org #BayArea
A flyer displaying ten author's photos alongside three quarters perimeter. In the center left, in black, title of the event: OWNING FEAR, REACHING FOR FREEDOM: POST-SOVIET WRITERS AND TRANSLATORS SPEAK OUT on the right, in red: LIT CRAWL SAN FRANCISCO Below, in Blue: Sat OCTOBER 25TH 5-6 PM AT RUTH'S TABLE 2160 21st Street Sponsored by California Humanities and Ruth's Table
October 9, 2025 at 5:35 PM
puncturedlines.bsky.social
Don't miss @kristinaten.bsky.social on the blog with an essay about nostalgia, complex geographies, & the inspiration for her speculative collection TELL ME YOURS, I'LL TELL YOU MINE. Stillhouse Press, October 7, 2025--preorder!
#BookSky #speculativefiction

puncturedlines.com/2025/09/16/w...
Top: Punctured Lines logo with black letters over white background and red stripes across. Left: The title of an essay: We Have to Go Back: Speculative Fiction, Nostalgia, and the Ghosts of Bookshelves Past, Guest Essay by Kristina Ten Right: Picture of a yellow book cover with pink lettering words on a page: I have a tricky relationship with nostalgia. It’s a complicated thing when you’re a child of empire, more complicated when you’re a child of two. I was born in Moscow to a mother with Siberian roots and a father with Georgian roots, whose own father was one of many Soviet Koreans living on Sakhalin Island before being forcibly deported, under Stalin’s regime, in cattle cars to rural Kazakhstan and other parts of Central Asia (my grandfather was the only one of his siblings to survive this displacement). After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, my parents and I moved to the United States. I grew up in Arizona, then New York, going to summer camp and raising Neopets and marveling at the novelty of AOL Instant Messenger, and I didn’t give much thought then to all the things I write about now: empire, patriarchy, all the terrifying ways a repressive state can assert its power. These days, it seems as though I think of little else. Which isn’t to say I’m immune to nostal words on a page: This species of nostalgia relies on a warped glorification of the past, with aims to influence the future. In Russia, it might look like Putin’s reinstatement of the Soviet national anthem in 2000; or, in more recent years, the steady reinstallation of monuments to Joseph Stalin throughout the country, monuments which had been systematically removed starting in the 1950s with the de-Stalinization reforms. In the States, it might look like a longing to return to “simpler, better times,” which, on its face, recalls some idyllic bygone era when it was socially acceptable to ride your bike to a friend’s house without calling first, to knock on their door, ask them to come out and play—and who doesn’t want that? But beneath this rosy vision often churns an undercurrent of traditional values about marriage, childrearing, and the nuclear family, along with anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment. “Back in my day, we would…” “Back in my day, we wouldn’t…” Remember the “good times,” these his Top: Punctured Lines logo, black letters on a white background with red stripes. Left: Read Kristina Ten's Guest Essay on Punctured Lines Pre-Order TELL ME YOURS I"LL TELL YOU MINE from Stillhouse Press Right: Yellow book cover with pink lettering
September 25, 2025 at 6:50 PM
puncturedlines.bsky.social
Today on the blog: A list of graphic memoirs and novels of Soviet trauma, written by women with personal or familial connections to the former USSR.

Y Nayberg, Lena Wolf, @rutasepetys.bsky.social, @verabrosgol.bsky.social, J Aleskeyeva, A Ulinich, H Moisseinen

puncturedlines.com/2025/08/05/g...
Collage of seven book covers
August 6, 2025 at 6:00 PM
puncturedlines.bsky.social
2025 Books by Post-Soviet Authors -- Thanks to @sashavasilyuk.bsky.social for keeping track of all the upcoming 2025 books by immigrant writers from the former USSR, writing in English and publishing in the US. Take a look -- it's quite a bounty of riches!

Authors include: @shustry.bsky.social,
A screenshot from the website PuncturedLines.com. A banner with old manuscript and samizdat pages at the top followed by the website content below. The opening post lines read: 2025 Books by Post-Soviet Authors February 11, 2025 ~ Sasha Vasilyuk ~ Edit"2025 Books by Post-Soviet Authors" 2025 is going to be a big year for books written by immigrant authors hailing from the Soviet Union who now call North America home. Since 2021, I’ve kept a running list of books coming out from our community as a way to keep tabs and, frankly, because no one else was doing it. Last year, when my own debut novel came out, there were only 7 books out from our community, a couple of them paperback editions of 2023 novels. This year, however, we have twelve new titles, plus three books–including my own–being released in paperback. A recent record! I imagine the war in Ukraine might have had something to do with this increased output as several of the authors below engage with the war and the resulting refugee crisis.
February 11, 2025 at 6:33 PM