Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa, in the former Soviet Union, in 1977, and immigrated in 1993 to the United States where his family was granted political asylum. He is the author of Dancing in Odessa (2004), which won the Whiting Writer’s Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, the Dorset Prize, and the Ruth Lilly Fellowship given annually by Poetry magazine. In 2008 he received a Lannan Literary Fellowship. Kaminsky teaches in the MFA program at San Diego State University.