Ilya Kaminsky (born in Odessa, Ukraine) came to the United States as a refugee in 1993 and has become one of the most celebrated poets writing in English as an adopted language. He is deaf and the question of listening — political, historical, and personal — runs through his work. His debut collection Dancing in Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004) received the Whiting Writers' Award and the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Metcalf Award. His second collection Deaf Republic (Graywolf, 2019), set in an occupied fictional country, won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. He is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University.