Press Release May 20, 2016

The Joseph Brodsky Fund Fellows – poet Linor Goralik and artist Olya Kroytor – will spend fall 2016 in residency in Italy.

The Joseph Brodsky Fellowship Fund is pleased to announce the 2016 fellowships in poetry and visual arts. The fellowship in poetry has been awarded to poet, prose writer and essayist Linor Goralik, and the visual art fellowship has been awarded to artist Olya Kroytor. Both Linor Goralik and Olya Kroytor will be enabled to spend fall and winter 2016 in Rome as residents of the Fund’s partner – the American Academy in Rome. Linor Goralik will also live and work in Venice for one month as a resident of the Emily Harvey Foundation. The Joseph Brodsky Memorial Fellowship Fund appreciates long-term collaboration with the partners who provide the fellows with facilities for effective work, new ideas and projects development, immersion to classical and contemporary Italian culture, as well as interacting with artists, writers, poets, and scholars from other parts of the world.

Linor Goralik (b. 1975 in Dnepropetrovsk) is a poet, prose writer, essayist and translator. She is an author of 20 books of poems and prose as well as juvenile books. She has translated to Russian Etgar Keret’ novels and Vitautas Pliura’s poems (in collaboration with Stanislav Lvovsky). Since 2014 Linor Goralik is Editor-in-Chief of the Booknik.ru internet portal which is dedicated to the Jewish literature and culture. She teaches Costume Theory in the Russian State University for the Humanities and the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. Linor Goralik won the Triumph Young Award (2003), Russian independent prize for excellence in literature and art, and the Portal Award (2012), international prize for phantasy novels and critics. Lives and works in Moscow (Russia) and Tel-Aviv (Israel).

Olya Kroytor (b. 1986 in Moscow), artist. Graduated from the Artistic and Graphic Department of the Moscow State Pedagogical University (2008) and Moscow Institute of Contemporary Art (2009). Works with collage and performance. She has had solo shows in Moscow Museum of Modern Art (2011), Regina Gallery (2011), Artwin Gallery (2015) in Moscow, ZARYA Center for Contemporary Arts in Vladivostok and Kicik Qalart in Baku, Azerbaijan. Olya Kroytor has also participated in many significant group exhibitions in Russia, Kazakhstan, Germany and the UK. She was nominated to the Sergey Kuryokhin Contemporary Art Award (2014, included in shortlist in the Best Public Art category) and to the Kandinsky Prize (2012), Russian independent contemporary art award. Lives and works in Moscow.

Joseph Brodsky was a Nobel Laureate in Literature and a distinguished poet and essayist. In 1995 he approached the mayor of Rome to urge the creation of a Russian Academy. This would bring Russian artists, writers, and scholars to join their colleagues from other countries who had, for centuries, sought inspiration in that ancient city. Joseph Brodsky reminded the mayor of seventy years gap in effective interactions and collaboration of two countries, and that the Russian Academy could become the source of their renaissance. The Joseph Brodsky Fellowship Fund was founded in the days after Brodsky`s death by a group of his friends in order to continue this effort in his memory. In 2000 the first poetry fellow went on residency to Italy. In 2002 the visual art fellowship was launched. Twenty six poets and visual artists – Fund’s fellows – have been enabled to live and work in Italy. The Joseph Brodsky Fellowship Fund is a non-profit organization supported by individual donors and independent foundations. The visual arts fellowship is being implemented thanks to the support of the Trust for Mutual Understanding. The Fund is very grateful to all the donors for possibility to further its mission.