Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa, former Soviet Union in 1977, and arrived to the United States in 1993, when his family was granted asylum by the American government. 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, including Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (Harper Collins, 2010) and Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva (Alice James Books, 2012). Kaminsky has been awarded fellowships with the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, and the Lannan Foundation. His poems have been translated into over twenty languages and his work has received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, 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, among other distinctions.