Berkeleyan

Berkeley Writers at Work to feature historian Slezkine

10 March 2005

Yuri Slezkine (Cristina Taccone photo)

Historian Yuri Slezkine will be featured in the Berkeley Writers at Work series on Wednesday, March 16, from noon to 1:30 p.m. in the Morrison Library, 101 Doe Library. Slezkine will read from his works, be interviewed about his writing process, and answer questions from the audience.

Slezkine, who received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin, is a specialist in late-modern European and Russian history. He has taught at Berkeley since 1992 and has been a recipient of Guggenheim and Fulbright-Hays fellowships.

His book Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North (Cornell, 1994) was named best book of the year in 1995 by the American History Association's Pacific Coast Branch. Daniel Orlovsky, writing in Slavic Review, called it "one of the most original contributions to our field in recent years, brilliant in conception and beautifully written with just the right touch of sardonic wit and empathetic wisdom."

Slezkine's most recent book is The Jewish Century (Princeton University Press, 2004), a history of 20th-century Russia. He has also edited two other books: In the Shadow of the Revolution: Life Stories of Russian Women From 1917 to the Second World War (with Sheila Fitzpatrick; Princeton, 2000) and Between Heaven and Hell: The Myth of Siberia in Russian Culture (with Galya Diment; St. Martin's Press, 1993).

Slezkine, the subject of a lengthy Q&A in the November 2004 issue of California Monthly (newscenter.berkeley.edu/goto/Slezkine) will be interviewed at the March 16 event by Gail Offen-Brown of the College Writing Programs.

The Berkeley Writers at Work series provides a forum in which campus authors discuss all aspects of their writing, from gathering material and crafting the framework of a piece of writing, to creating a mood, editing, and revising.

The series is sponsored by the College Writing Programs; events are free and open to the public. For information, see writing.berkeley.edu/bwaw, call 642-5570, or e-mail tollef@.berkeley.edu.