Eugene Ostashevski

Biography

Eugene Ostashevsky is a poet and translator. He was born in St. Petersburg in 1968 and grew up in New York. After earning a PhD in Comparative Literature at Stanford University, he taught literature and philosophy at New York University. His books of poetry include Iterature, The Life and Opinions of DJ Spinoza and Enter Morris Imposternak, Pursued by Ironies published by the acclaimed publisher Ugly Duckling Presse. Morris Imposternak was translated into German by Uliana Wolf and published by SuKuLTuR in Berlin with the title Auf tritt Morris Imposternak, Verfolgt von Ironien.
He has translated books from Russian by avant-garde 20th century poets, poets such as Aleksandr Vvedenskij and Daniil Charms, and contemporary poets such as Dmitry Golynko and Arkady Dragomoscenko. And from Italian, he has translated the work of the contemporary poetess Elisa Biagini.
As a librettist, he has worked with Lucia Ronchetti for Hamlet's Mill, performed in Stuttgart in 2009 by the Neue Vocalsolisten, and with Boris Filanovskij on A Certain Quality of Conversations, performed in 2005 in Rotterdam by the Doelen Ensemble.
Eugene Ostashevsky has received awards and recognition from various institutions, including the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, New York Foundation of the Arts; Wytter Bynner Foundation, Yaddo, New York; MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, NH (USA ), and Château de Lavigny (Switzerland). In addition to the courses at NYU, he has taught courses and seminars in Florence (NYU, Villa La Pietra), Bergamo and Ankara (Turkey).
In the 2013-14 period he is residing in Berlin thanks to the award from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD).