PRESS RELEASE
March 31, 2008

We are very pleased to announce our poetry fellowship for 2009 to be granted by the Joseph Brodsky Memorial Fellowship Fund. The new fellow will be poet Nikolay Zvyagintsev.

Nikolay Zvyagitsev was born in 1967 in Moscow. He graduated from the Moscow Architectural Institute. Zvyagintsev worked as an architect-instaurator for several years, than left architecture for advertising, where he works for 15 years now. At present time Zvyagintsev holds position of the chief art-director in an international adverising agency.

Nikolay Zvyagintsev became a member of “Poluostrov” (“Peninsula”) group together with Igor Sid, Maria Maksimova and Mikhail Laptev since the beginning of the 90-s; participated in Bosporus forums of contemporary art and culture (1993-1995).

Zvyagintsev’s poems were first published late 1991 in “Russian Courier” newspaper. Since that time he permanently publishes poetry in numerous newspapers, magazines and almanachs. Zvyahintsev has four published books of poetry: “Спинка пьющего из лужи” (“The spine of the one who’s drinking from a puddle”) – M., ARGO-RISK, 1993; “Законная область притворства” (“The Legal Terrain of Hypocrisy”) – М.; ARGO-RISK, 1996, “Крым НЗ” (“Crimea ES”) – М.; OGI, 2001; “Туц” (“Toots”– М.; Novoe Izdatelstvo, 2008. Poems by Nikolay Zvyagintsev were translated into English («Essays in poetics», 1994), French ( “Lettres Russes”, 2003) and Ukrainian (2001).

Zvyagintsev was shortlisted for the 2008 Andrei Bely Award for his collection of poems, “Toots”.

He will serve a one month fellowship in Rome and Venice during the fall and winter of the year 2008.

Mr. Zvyagintsev’s fellowship is made possible by a generous gift from Mr. George Rohr, president of New Century Holdings Company and founder of Rohr Family Foundation.

Joseph Brodsky was a Nobel laureate in literature and a distinguished poet in his native Russia as well as his second home in the West. In the fall of 1995 he made an appeal to the mayor of Rome that a Russian Academy in Rome be established, to allow Russian artists, writers, and scholars periods of work and study in Italy. He urged that seventy years of isolation under communist rule had broken a much older tradition of cultural exchange between Russia and her European neighbors; he wished to revive this tradition with the creation of an independent academy devoted to literature, culture, and scholarship. As he wrote to the mayor, "Italy was a revelation to the Russians; now it can become the source of their renaissance."

When he died in 1996 his vision was taken up by a group of his friends, who set up foundations in the US and Italy to realize it.

The Joseph Brodsky Memorial Fellowship Fund is funded by private donation and independent foundations. We are most grateful to our donors for giving Mr. Brodsky's vision this continuing life.

For more information, please contact:
Ann Kjellberg, New York
(212) 645 3346