*********************************
There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
*********************************
Ilya KaminskyIlya Kaminsky, professor in the School of Literature, Media and Communication, was recognized for winning an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for his book "Deaf Republic" in Crain's Cleveland Business on March 30, 2020.
The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, "the only national juried prize for literature that confronts racism and explores diversity," is one of a number of prizes that Kaminsky has won for "Deaf Republic."
Excerpt:
Kaminsky, born in Odessa in 1977, is a poet, editor and translator whose first book, "Dancing in Odessa," was published in more than 20 languages. He holds the Bourne Chair in Poetry at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
As a child, he was misdiagnosed by a Soviet doctor who thought he had a cold, and the mistake left Kaminsky hard of hearing.
Via the Cleveland Foundation: Amid rising antisemitism, Kaminsky's family won political asylum from the United States in 1993 and resettled in Rochester, New York, where he was fitted with hearing aids. Kaminsky, adept in Russian, Ukranian and English poetry, became a lawyer first. When "Deaf Republic" arrived, the BBC named Kaminsky "one of the 12 artists that changed the world in 2019." Anisfield-Wolf Juror Rita Dove said the book haunted her, "a parable that comes to life and refuses to die." It describes an unnamed country whose citizens can no longer hear one another, set amid political unrest. The book, which contains pictograms of sign language words, became a finalist for the National Book Award.
