A poet who came to the United States as a refugee in 1993, Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa, in the former Soviet Union, and is deaf. He holds the Bourne Chair in Poetry at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His debut collection, Dancing in Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004), received the Whiting Award and the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Metcalf Award. His second collection, Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press, 2019), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and the 2019 National Jewish Book Award in poetry, and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
