Igor Georgievich Vishnevetsky (Russian: Игорь Георгиевич Вишневецкий; born 5 January 1964)[1] is a Russian-born poet, novelist, screenwriter, and editor. He has been a contributor and editor in numerous literary journals, anthologies, and scholarly periodicals since the 1980s. Some of his work has been published in English, including a translated version of his first novel, Leningrad (2010).

Igor Vishnevetsky
Игорь Георгиевич Вишневецкий
Born
Igor Georgievich Vishnevetsky

(1964-01-05) 5 January 1964 (age 60)
Alma materMoscow State University
Brown University
Occupation(s)Poet, novelist, scholar, filmmaker, educator
ChildrenIgnatiy Vishnevetsky

Biography

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Igor Vishnevetsky was born in Rostov-on-Don in 1964 to Georgiy and Alla Vishnevetsky. Vishnevetsky originally aspired to become a composer. He studied piano performance in school and audited music theory courses at Rostov State Rachmaninoff Conservatory before attending Moscow State University to pursue a degree in philology. After graduating in 1986, Vishnevetsky became an active member of the poetry and art scenes in Moscow and St. Petersburg prior to the break-up of the Soviet Union.

Vishnevetsky emigrated to the United States in 1992. Since that time his creative work has been done chiefly in North America.

In 1996 Vishnevetsky received a Ph.D. in Russian Literature from the Department of Slavic Languages of Brown University. Subsequently, he taught at Emory University for five years. In the 2000s, he has also become a notable music historian, and is considered an authority on Sergei Prokofiev[2] and the Russian-American composer Vladimir Dukelsky.

Vishnevetsky also was a visiting professor of Russian and Film at Carnegie Mellon University.[2] During this time, he wrote his experimental novel Leningrad which describes the dehumanizing effects of the Finno-German siege of the city during World War II and deals with transformation of former Russian capital into a Soviet city. Praised for its insights into the minds of the people who experienced the collapse of everything associated with humanity, Leningrad won a 2010 award for the best fiction published in Russia's leading literary periodical Novyi mir. In 2012 it won a prestigious "New Verbal Art (Novaya Slovesnost', or NoS)" literary award.

Since 2010 Vishnevetsky had been working on a film version of Leningrad.[3][4] The film was completed in 2014 (a slightly shorter version in 2015) and received a number of awards.[5][6] Film historian and critic Andrei Plakhov called it "an absolutely amazing experiment,",[7] while film critic Evgeny Maisel considered Visnevetsky's film "a true challenge to contemporary professional film production."[8] Since 2018 he teaches English and Russian literature at the Franciscan University of Steubenville.[2]

Vishnevetsky is an Eastern Orthodox Christian.[2] His son is film critic Ignatiy Vishnevetsky.

Bibliography

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Collected poetry

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  • Poems (Stikhotvoreniya). Moscow: ALVA-XXI, 1992. 42 pp.
  • Threefold Vision (Troynoe zrenie). New York: Slovo/Word, 1997. 88 pp.
  • Air Mail: Poems 1996-2001 (Vozdushnaya pochta: Stikhi 1996–2001). Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2001. 96 pp. ISBN 5-86793-148-X
  • West of the Sun (Na zapad solntsa). Moscow: Nauka; Russkiy Gulliver, 2006. 278 pp. ISBN 5-02-034198-3
  • First Snow (Pervosnezhye). Moscow: Russkiy Gulliver, 2008. 76 pp. ISBN 978-5-91627-009-9
  • Rhymologion (Stikhoslov). Moscow: Ikar, 2008. 126 pp. ISBN 978-5-7974-0184-1
  • Collected Poems 2002-2020 (Sobranie strikhotvorenii 2002–2020). Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2021. 308 pp. ISBN 978-5-4448-1572-4

Fiction

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  • Leningrad: povest'. Moscow: Vremya, 2012. 160 pp. ISBN 978-5-9691-0796-0
  • Leningrad: A novel. Translated by Andrew Bromfield. Champaign - London - Dublin: Dalkey Archive Press, 2013. 124 pp. ISBN 978-1-56478-902-0
  • Leningrad. Translated into Macedonian by Мirjana Naumovski. Skopje: Bata pres, 2014. 154 pp. ISBN 978-608-4654-68-1
  • Non-Elective Affinities (Neizbiratelinoe srodstvo[: сollected prose – novels Leningrad (2009), Islands in the Lagoon / Ostrova v lagune (2012), Non-Elective Affinities / Neizbiratelinoe srodstvo (2013-2017), short fiction Poet Who Was Not Forgotten / Nezabytyi poet (2012)]). Moscow: EKSMO, 2018. 384 pp. ISBN 978-5-04-093120-0
  • Leningrad. Traduzione a cura di Daniela Rizzi e Luisa Ruvoletto. Venezia: Libreria Editrice Cafoscarina, 2019. 216 pp. ISBN 978-88-7543-465-6
  • Le affinità non elettive: romanzo. Anno 1835. Traduzione, postfazione e cura di Iris Karafillidis; prefazione di Stefano Garzonio. Pisa: Pisa University Press, 2023. 216 pp. ISBN 978-88-3339-891-4

Academic works (selected)

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Filmography

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  • Leningrad (2015)

References

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