It is fitting that as we will meet to hear some talented voices to emerge from Central and Eastern Europe, the Nobel Committee in Sweden has this month awarded the Literature prize to Poland’s Olga Tokarczuk, a novelist of a unique and singular vision. Tokarczuk’s writing is, at once, inescapably informed by her Polish life experiences, and universal. 

Communism fell across the Block in 1989 — it’s been 30 years now. The voices we will hear Saturday evening, those of two Poles, a Croat and a Russian, are similarly grounded in their legacies — occupation, socialism, privation, struggle; but laughter, family, and joy, too. From our perspective, that of 2019, those turbulent times are perhaps merely an inflection. For that normalcy, we rejoice.

A variety of refreshments will be available to sample.

Marek Kulig is originally from Poland but grew up in New Jersey and now lives in Massachusetts, where he writes for a local food magazine and works in medical sales. Kulig has an MA in English Literature from Middlebury College and has contributed to several writers’ workshops, residencies, and programs, including Cuttyhunk Island Writers' Residency and the Disquiet International Literary Program. His poems and translations are published or forthcoming in The Esthetic Apostle, Cagibi, High Shelf Press, and National Translation Month.

Basia Winograd grew up in a Polish-speaking community in New York City. She didn’t learn to communicate in English until she went to kindergarten. Nevertheless, as an adult she struggles to express herself in Polish. Much of her writing is an effort to come to terms with what it means to be estranged from your mother tongue. A filmmaker and teacher as well as a writer, Basia holds a BA in English from Amherst College, an MFA in Film Directing from Columbia University, as well as an MFA in Fiction Writing from Hunter College. Basia currently teaches Creative Writing to undergraduates at Hunter College. 

Maia McPherson is a life-long resident of Boston, MA. Maia writes, paints, and draws as a daily practice and is beginning to explore ways in which to combine her creative work into larger pieces of art. Her poem, “The Woods Eat War and Forget It,” was published in the New Mexico Mercury and her story "The Flood" will be published in the forthcoming issue of The Fairy Tale Review. Currently, Maia teaches kindergarten at an independent school.  

Maxim Matusevich is a native of St. Petersburg, Russia, from where he emigrated to the United States in 1991. A professional historian by training and vocation, he started to write and publish fiction in English about three years ago. His two short stories and a novella appeared in the Kenyon Review, New England Review, and the Bare Life Review. In his writing, Maxim is drawn to characters who are whimsical and unconventional. As befits a historian the questions of the malleability of memory and urban nostalgia loom large in his artistic imagination.