The Boise State Creative Writing MFA Reading Series and the Literary Translation Society present poet and translator Matvei Yankelevich, winner of a National Translation Award.

At 7:30 PM on Friday, April 25, 2025, Yankelevich will give a reading of his work, followed by a Q and A and book signing. Free and open to the public, the MFA Reading Series brings renowned writers to campus each year.

"Matvei Yankelevich is an unrivaled cultural provider for those who want to know about the neglected poets of our turbulent times... In his own writing, his humor is at once playful and dark: “My work is simply writing on the page. There is no more depth. Where there is depth it gets too dark to see. Some days I feel like seeing no one.” The logic of these lines is discovered through the poet’s attention to words. That’s what elevates Yankelevich’s seemingly casual poetry into another realm of consciousness." -John Yau & Albert Mobilio, Hyperallergic

A poet, translator, and editor, Matvei Yankelevich's books include the poetry collections "Some Worlds for Dr. Vogt" (Black Square) and "Dead Winter" (Fonograf), as well as the translations "Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings of Daniil Kharms" (Overlook) and Alexander Vvedensky's "An Invitation for Me to Think" (NYRB Poets; with Eugene Ostashevsky), winner of the 2014 National Translation Award. He received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for Humanities, and Civitella Ranieri. In the 1990s, he co-founded Ugly Duckling Presse where he edited and designed books, periodicals, and ephemera for more than twenty years. Since 2022, he served as the editor of World Poetry Books, a nonprofit publisher of poetry in translation. In 2023 he founded the literary small press Winter Editions. He teaches translation at Columbia University's School of the Arts.