Three women speak to the immigrant story.
Nina Murray was born and raised in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. An American poet and translator, she is the author of two books of poetry,
Alcestis in the Underworld (Circling Rivers, 2019) and
Minimize Considered (Finishing Line Press, 2018), and the translator of Oksana Zabuzhko’s
Museum of Abandoned Secrets (Amazon Crossing, 2013), and Peter Aleshkovsky’s
Fish: A History of One Migration (Russian Life Books, 2010) and
Stargorod (Russian Life Books, 2013). She holds advanced degrees in linguistics and creative writing and regularly publishes original poetry, book reviews, and translations.
Born to a Russian mother and an Azerbaijani father,
Sophia Shalmiyev was raised in the stark oppressiveness of 1980s Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). An imbalance of power and the prevalence of antisemitism in her homeland led her father to steal Shalmiyev away, emigrating to America, abandoning her estranged mother, Elena. At age eleven, Shalmiyev found herself on a plane headed west, motherless and terrified of the new world unfolding before her.
Raki Kopernik is a queer, Jewish fiction and poetry writer. She is the author of
The Things You Left (Unsolicited Press 2020),
The Memory House (The Muriel Press 2019) which was a finalist for the Red Hen Press Nonfiction Award, and
The Other Body (Dancing Girl Press 2017). Her work has been published in
New Flash Review Fiction, Blue Lyra Review, El Balazo, Duende, and others. It has also been shortlisted and nominated for several awards, including the Pushcart Prize for fiction. She lives in Minneapolis. You can find her here:
https://rakikopernik.wixsite.com/mysite and follow her on instagram
@rakikopernik