PoPuGan Pushes the Boundaries May 23, 2012

***For the general English-speaking public. *** This event is FREE.***

PoPuGan is a group of three young Russian women, all leading critics in the vibrant Moscow literary scene, all winners of the prestigious Debut Prize. They have banded together to reexamine the critic's place in contemporary culture – and to engender a new kind criticism that will compel and excite readers of all kinds.

Towards that end, the talented young women of PoPuGan have invented literary games. The audience actively participates in the fun: the games draw the us in, revealing how much we actually know. And at the same time, through an original brand of creative humor, each game leads us into the gist of how authors use language, reveals the presuppositions we carry into our reading, and much more. Join in the fun... and become a better reader, too!

PoPuGan is:

Valeria Pustovaya A native Muscovite, graduate of Moscow University's Journalism School. She a leading literary critic and runs the criticism department of one of Russia's great old literary journals, October. Her articles have appeared in countless periodicals. It was for her critical essays that she won the Debut Prize – specifically, she won it for the article in which she coined the term “The New Realism.” She has also won the Gorky prize, the October Journal prize, the Novy Mir prize, and the New Pushkin Prize. Among her teachers, Pustovaya names the philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev and philosopher-historian Ostwald Spengler. She was among the young writers who met with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in February of 2007.

Elena Pogorelaya Originally from the Penza province, Pogorelaya graduated Moscow State University with a degree in Philology. She currently heads the contemporary literature division of the leading literary-critical journal “Literary Issues” (Вопросы литературы). She also teaches at the literary lyceum at the Russian State University for the Humanities and is a member of the editorial board of the journal “Literary Education.” Pogorelaya's literary-critical articles treat both classic and contemporary Russian literature. They can be found in every major Russian literary journal, including Znamya, Novy Mir, and Voprosy literatury. Her critical work is also published in English in Russian Studies in Literature (M. E. Sharpe, NY). Pogorelaya is a poet as well as a critic and has won the Lermontov and Eureka Awards. She became a Debut Prize finalist for her critical work on contemporary literature and for a cycle of essays collected under the title “Portraits.”

Alisa Ganieva Born in 1985 in Moscow, she soon moved with her family to their native Dagestan. Years later, she would be born in Moscow again, now as a writer. Her literature, however, continues to revolve around her Dagestani world. Ganieva was established as a rising critic in Moscow when she was suddenly catapulted to fame by the Debut Prize. Her 2009 Salam, Dalgat was a sharply controversial literary mystification. It was published as the work of Gulla Khirachev, a fighter in the war-torn Russian Caucasus. It exploded onto the literary scene and Khirachev was a star - until the Debut Prize awards ceremony. Khirachev was declared the winner, but in place of an unkempt rebel in khakis or camouflage, up to accept the prize came the slender and refined Ganieva. A graduate of Moscow’s prestigious Literary Institute, Ganieva has won awards for literary criticism and a collection of her critical essays has come out in a book, “The Flight of the Archeopteryx.”

Moderating will be Eliot Borenstein, long one of NYU's most popular and beloved professors. His first book, Men without Women: Masculinity and Revolution in Russian Fiction, 1917-1919, won the AATSEEL award for best work in literary scholarship in 2000. In 2007, he published Overkill: Sex and Violence in Contemporary Russian Popular Culture, which received the AWSS award for best book in Slavic Gender Studies in 2008. Recently, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to finish the companion volume, Catastrophe of the Week: Apocalyptic Entertainment in Post-Soviet Russia.

This event is brought to you by CAUSA ARTIUM, a NYC-based arts non-profit, with the support of the Jordan Center for Advanced Slavic Studies, and in cooperation with the NYU Department of Russian and Slavic Studies and the Debut Prize Foundation.

For over a decade, the Debut Prize has sought out young Russian-speaking literary talent the world over. Receiving as many as 70,000 submissions annually, Debut is a vast competition, one of Russia's elite literary honors and a landmark in the literary calendar, the brainchild of Andrei Skoch, a noted philanthropist, businessman and member of the Russian parliament.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT CAUSA ARTIUM AT:

[email protected]
1 (212) 203-0461

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Official Website: http://www.debutprize.com/ai1ec_event/literary-games-popugan-pushes-the-boundaries/?instance_id=134