Talks and conferences
If you are holding an event related to Russia or her neighbours which you would like us to list on this page please email brief details and an image to info@scotlandrussiaforum.org. The SRF reserves the right to accept, reject or edit material sent in.
Thursday 29 September
|
A Very Private Affair – a Soviet Dissident’s “English Wife”
|
|
Book Launch: Pam Wardell
6.00pm, Princess Dashkova Russian Centre, 14 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh |
“A Very Private Affair…” is a memoir of Speranza Howard (1903 – 95) who was born and brought up in pre-revolutionary Russia and escaped with her family, in 1920, to London. But it is also a story of the Russian writer Boris Pilniak, who visited Britain just once, but who claimed to have lost his heart for ever to a half-English girl he met in 1923 – Pam’s aunt.
The identity of his “English Wife” was unknown until, in the Russian memorabilia Pam Wardell had stored in her loft, she found two bundles of love - letters written by Boris to Speranza, from 1923 and 1929. Thus began her researches into their long affair, which had remained a secret for the whole of her aunt’s life.
Pam Wardell tells two stories in parallel: one about the secret life of her enigmatic intellectual Aunt, Speranza Howard (1903 – 1995); the other about her personal journey to uncover the impact of the Russian Revolution on her family’s history. “It began with the Russian love letters I found among my aunt’s papers after her death in 1995. I only realized their full impact when I showed them to the translator Michael Falchikov. It took wings after a visit to Russia in 2004 to meet the researcher Dagmar Kassek, who spent years collecting the letters of Boris Pilniak for publication by Moscow University Press in 2011. And slowly it grew into a manuscript, the bones of a book.” Through a unique collaboration with the graphic designer Janey Boyd (Mamook Graphics), Pam has produced a stunningly illustrated account of one twentieth century woman’s love for the Soviet dissident writer, Boris Pilniak.
The event is open and everyone is welcome. Places are limited so please register on: https://pamwardell.eventbrite.co.uk
The identity of his “English Wife” was unknown until, in the Russian memorabilia Pam Wardell had stored in her loft, she found two bundles of love - letters written by Boris to Speranza, from 1923 and 1929. Thus began her researches into their long affair, which had remained a secret for the whole of her aunt’s life.
Pam Wardell tells two stories in parallel: one about the secret life of her enigmatic intellectual Aunt, Speranza Howard (1903 – 1995); the other about her personal journey to uncover the impact of the Russian Revolution on her family’s history. “It began with the Russian love letters I found among my aunt’s papers after her death in 1995. I only realized their full impact when I showed them to the translator Michael Falchikov. It took wings after a visit to Russia in 2004 to meet the researcher Dagmar Kassek, who spent years collecting the letters of Boris Pilniak for publication by Moscow University Press in 2011. And slowly it grew into a manuscript, the bones of a book.” Through a unique collaboration with the graphic designer Janey Boyd (Mamook Graphics), Pam has produced a stunningly illustrated account of one twentieth century woman’s love for the Soviet dissident writer, Boris Pilniak.
The event is open and everyone is welcome. Places are limited so please register on: https://pamwardell.eventbrite.co.uk
Monday 17 October
|
An Evening with Nina Dashevskaya
The Russian Word in Scotland Series
6.00pm, Princess Dashkova Russian Centre, 14 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh |
Nina Dashevskaya, a writer and musician is a new name in Russian children’s literature and a multiple winner of the Kniguru award. She will read from her books and answer questions. Children are particularly welcome to this event!
Please register for event on http://dashevskaya.eventbrite.co.uk
Please register for event on http://dashevskaya.eventbrite.co.uk
21-23 October
Mandelstam by Ludmila Semyatitskaya.
The picture will be part of a street exhibition during the conference.
|
Moffat Russian Conference 2016. Poet i vlast' (Poets and Power)
An annual Russian conference held in Moffat and organised by Moffat Book Events, the Russian State Library for Foreign Literature and the Institute of Translation, Moscow.
More information on www.moffatbookevents.com. |
The theme for this year's Moffat Conference is Poet i vlast’ – Poets and Power. The focus will be on five of the great poets of the first half of twentieth-century Russia, all of whom were hounded by the Soviet regime: Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966), Nikolai Gumilev (1886–shot in 1921), Osip Mandelstam (1891–died in the Gulag 1938), Boris Pasternak (1890–1960), and Marina Tsvetaeva (1892–driven to suicide 1941).The theme has been chosen in recognition that 2016 is the 200th anniversary of the visit to Scotland (including Moffat) by the future Tsar Nicholas I, self-appointed censor to Pushkin; it is also the 125th anniversary of the birth of Mandelstam and the 50th anniversary of the death of Anna Akhmatova. All these writers, still too little known in this country, faced death and imprisonment in their lives. Their legacy is work which confronts the issues of human freedom and loss, faith and despair, language and creativity. One of the main tasks of this year’s conference will be to make these outstanding writers more widely appreciated outside their own country and reflect on the extent to which their experience has relevance for the creative arts in a mature democracy.
The draft programme is on http://www.moffatbookevents.com/news.
The draft programme is on http://www.moffatbookevents.com/news.
Wednesday 25 January
image (c) New Yorker
|
Tatiana Tolstaya at the UofG
4-7pm.
Venue tbc Tickets £10 Please press "interested" (if you are) to allow the RSS to estimate potential demand. Hosted by Univ of Glasgow Russian Speaking Society. |
Tatyana Tolstaya is a Russian writer, publicist and TV presenter. She was born in Leningrad in an aristocratic family that includes the writers Leo and Alexei Tolstoy. Nowadays she is one of the most prominent and established representatives of contemporary Russian literature and media-figures. Her recently closed TV program The School of Aspersion, which she co-hosted with a film director Audothia Smirnova, based on interviews with famous artists, scientists, culture and media workers,enjoyed wide popularity amongst the 'intelligentsia'.
Tatiana Tolstaya will find time in her tight schedule and come to Glasgow at the end of January 2017 to talk with us about Russian literature, people and language. She speaks... fluent English since she spent much of the late eighties and nineties living in the United States and teaching at several universities.
Some of Tatiana Tolstaya's essays published by The New Yorker and BBC magazines:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/12/26/yorick
http://www.newyorker.com/contributors/tatyana-tolstaya
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30588404
http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/tatyana-tolstaya/
And her appearance on the show of the Society's previous guest Vladimir Pozner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AD1U3jVLYM
Tatiana Tolstaya will find time in her tight schedule and come to Glasgow at the end of January 2017 to talk with us about Russian literature, people and language. She speaks... fluent English since she spent much of the late eighties and nineties living in the United States and teaching at several universities.
Some of Tatiana Tolstaya's essays published by The New Yorker and BBC magazines:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/12/26/yorick
http://www.newyorker.com/contributors/tatyana-tolstaya
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30588404
http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/tatyana-tolstaya/
And her appearance on the show of the Society's previous guest Vladimir Pozner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AD1U3jVLYM
