'Void' by Alumna Alla Vilnyanskaya '18 Available for Pre-Order

Void, a debut collection by Poetry Alumna Alla Vilnyanskaya '18, is available for pre-order from Thirty West Publishing House. The collection is scheduled for release on August 27th, 2021. 

Vilnyanskaya tackles femicide and literary culture by using a blend of original poetry, excerpts, and translations of Ukrainian poet Anastassia Afanas'va. According to David Schloss, "In a parallel universe, Anastassia's poems are the metaphysical double that takes us into the uncanny realm of the imagination." 

The collection has already received great praise from several contemporary poets, including Columbia professors. Associate Professor Dorothea Lasky called Vilnyanskaya's poems "bold and beautiful, dealing with ideas of violence both viscerally and as a type of idea, or abstraction. She uses frightening imagery to convey the terror a person can feel being in a body, both what it can do and can be done to it." 

According to poet Jan Beatty, author of Body Wars, "Alla Vilnyanskaya writes with a compelling sense of immediacy, a passion for delivering the reader to a dramatic moment. Yet, it's her sense of time and the larger world's sadness that we feel in these intense, driven poems." 

Alla Vilnyanskaya was born in the Ukraine and raised in the US. She came to Philadelphia in 1989 with her parents. She holds an MA from Miami University and an MFA from Columbia University. Her work has been published in multiple online and print journals including Zaum, Poetry International, Saint Ann’s Review and Boog City. She is an alumna of The Home School and has won several teaching fellowships and other awards from Miami University and Columbia University.