Ilya Kaminsky is a USSR-born, Ukrainian-Jewish-American poet, critic, translator and professor. He is best known for his poetry collections Dancing in Odessa and Deaf Republic, which have earned him several awards. In 2019, the BBC named Kaminsky among “12 artists who changed the world.” In addition to this staged reading, you can hear from the author on Saturday, April 6, as he reads selections from Deaf Republic.

Deaf Republic (2019) follows a family of puppeteers as they struggle to resist the war that surrounds them. Drawing connections between global and local political conflicts and conveying the importance of standing up to tyranny, Deaf Republic weaves a rich allegory of the urgency of collective action in times of oppression. Told in two acts, it begins with a shooting of Petya, a deaf boy, by soldiers occupying the fictional town of Vasenka. In response to his murder, the townspeople collectively go deaf, inventing their own sign language and using puppets to resist their oppressors. As the sound of the gun that kills Petya triggers deafness in the villagers, disability acts as a metaphor for the limitations of empathy and dangers of ignorance.

This event is part of the NEA Big Read: Central Florida, which is pleased to present a series of events celebrating Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky. An initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest, the NEA Big Read broadens our understanding of our world, our communities, and ourselves through the power of a shared reading experience. Learn more at cah.ucf.edu/bigread.

Partial funding for NEA Big Read supplemental programming is provided by Florida Humanities. Funding for this program was provided by Florida Humanities and sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Arts and Culture, and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture.

ASL interpreters will be in attendance at this event.