New Writing Series: Yaryna Chornohuz and Amelia Glaser

About New Writing Series

UC San Diego’s New Writing Series invites local, national, and international authors to read and perform throughout the academic year. Welcoming a wide range of authors and genres, including playwrights, poets, translators, essayists, critics, fiction writers, and performance artists, the New Writing Series celebrates both emerging and established award-winning writers. Readers also include Department of Literature faculty and graduate students in the MFA Program in Writing. The readings are followed by in-depth question and answer periods that center on craft and artistic practice.

The New Writing Series is co-sponsored by the Department of Literature and the UC San Diego Library’s Special Collections & Archives.

Recordings of New Writing Series readings, as well as its predecessor, the New Poetry Series, which dates back to 1972, are part of the Archive for New Poetry in UC San Diego Library’s Special Collections & Archives.

This New Writing Series event features readings from Yaryna Chornohuz and Amelia Glaser.

Yaryna Chornohuz Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, Yaryna Chornohuz is a writer, a poet, and a sergeant in the Ukrainian Marine Corps. She first volunteered for Ukraine's defense effort in 2019 as a combat medic. She later joined the Marines and retrained as a drone pilot. As a service member, she has been awarded the medals For Saving a Life, For Military Service to Ukraine, and the Badge of Honor of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine. Chornohuz is the author of three poetry collections – How the War Circle Bends (2020), [dasein: defense of presence] (2023), and Nobody’s Saffron (2025). Her first nonfiction book, documenting six years of her experience as a female combatant in Russia's war against Ukraine, is forthcoming in Ukrainian. She was awarded Ukraine's highest literary distinction, the Taras Shevchenko National Prize (2024), for [dasein: defense of presence], as well as the UN Women in Arts Award (2024). Her poetry has been translated into English, French, German, Polish, and other languages. She is a member of PEN Ukraine.

Amelia Glaser is a Professor of Literature at UCSD, and a translator from Ukrainian, Yiddish, and Russian. She is the author of Jews and Ukrainians in Russia’s Literary Borderlands (2012) and Songs in Dark Times: Yiddish Poetry of Struggle from Scottsboro to Palestine (2020). Her translations and co-translations from Ukrainian include books by Halyna Kruk, Iya Kiva, and Yaryna Chornohuz. Her translations of Chornohuz's [dasein] and Nobody’s Saffron have appeared, respectively, with Jantar (2025) and Arrowsmith (2026).

Our events are FREE and open to the public!