AWP 2026: 🚫BURNING OF THE BOOKS: Long live the republic of imagination!
Thursday, March 5, 2026 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM EST
Poe Room, Floor 9, Indigo, Baltimore
AWP Offsite, March 5, 2026, Poe Room, 9th Floor Indigo Hotel, 24 W Franklin St, Baltimore, MD 21201
Fiction is an antidote, a reminder of the power of individual choice.
- Azar Nafisi's The Republic of Imagination, 2014
The Republic of Imagination is under threat. To protect it we need to work together. Join us in honoring and celebrating writers, artists, publishers, librarians and curators who are committed to defending freedom of expression – here in the U.S. and around the world. We will gather in the Edgar Allan “Poe Room” at Hotel Indigo for short readings and discussion, and audience participation. Afterwards, the gathering will migrate downstairs to Poets Cafe for further conversation.
Akram Aylisli’s books were burned in 2013, and he continues to be persecuted by his own government in Azerbaijan. Russian missiles destroyed one of Ukraine’s largest book-printing factories in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Katya Kazirimova saved some of the books and carries them as talismans of a country pummeled by Russia’s war. Amy Sherald moved her exhibition from the Smithsonian to the Baltimore Museum of Art so she would not be censored. The brave artists, writers and their publishers, translators, curators and the museums, libraries, bookstores and spaces that share their work, work together to hold together our republic of imagination. Come hear their voices and celebrate the human spirit.
Event Hosts & Sponsors: Full Bleed, the Maryland Institute College of Art, the Cheuse Center, Poetry Daily, Watershed Lit, the MFA at George Mason
Cover photo credit: Full Bleed journal, Issue 08: https://www.full-bleed.org/issue-8-censorship
Elizabeth Larison is the Director of Arts and Culture Advocacy at the National Coalition Against Censorship, a member and co-curator at Don’t Delete Art, and a writer and curator. At NCAC Elizabeth oversees art censorship case interventions and advocacy leadership; field-wide strategizing and education initiatives; develops and distributes resources; and collaborates with other organizations in the field to strengthen artistic freedom across the United States. Elizabeth's work has been featured in The Art Newspaper, Art in America, The Interlocutor, Transatlantica, Full Bleed, and Art21, and she regularly speaks on artistic freedom in the United States and online, and has done so at events hosted by Amant, ArtTable, Art at a Time Like This, Artists at Risk Connection, Brooklyn Rail, CEC Artslink, Four Freedoms Park Conservancy, Lawyers for the Creative Arts, New York City Council, RightsCon, Undoxx, the University of Texas at Houston, Zocalo Public Square, among others. Elizabeth holds degrees in Human Rights (BA, Bard College) and Curatorial Studies (MA, Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College), and has over fifteen years of experience working in civil society organizations expanding access to and participation in the arts, and defending artistic freedom.
Roman Kostovski translates poetry and prose from Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian, and Slovak into English. His translations have appeared in numerous journals, including Absinthe-New European Writings and Watchword Press and the Poet Lore. His full-length translations include Arnost Lustig’s Fire on Water (Northwestern University Press, 2006), Viktor Dyk’s Czech classic The Ratcatcher (Plamen Press, 2014), Vitězslav Nezval’s Farewell and a Handkerchief-Poems from the Road (Plamen Press, 2020). He founded Plamen Press in 2015, a print-on-demand publishing house for the promotion of literature from Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe throughout the English-speaking world. He works and resides in Washington, D.C.
Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odesa, Ukraine and came to the United States in 1993 after his family received asylum. He is the author of Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press) and Dancing in Odessa (Tupelo Press), and has co-edited and co-translated several books. His work has been a finalist for the National Book Award and has received numerous honors, including the Los Angeles Times Book Award, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, National Jewish Book Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, and Whiting Award. Deaf Republic was named a Notable Book by The New York Times and a Best Book of the Year by many major publications. Kaminsky collaborates across artistic disciplines; his project Odesa with photographer Yelena Yamchuk was listed among Time’s 20 Best Photo Books of 2022. His poetry has been translated into over twenty languages and published internationally, earning honors in France, Italy, Germany, and China. In 2019, BBC named him one of “12 artists that changed the world.” He has worked in legal aid and immigration advocacy and now teaches at Princeton University.
Kateryna Kazimirova is an editor and media manager. She holds Master’s degrees in Philology (Ukrainian Language and Literature) and History of Art and a Postgraduate degree in Literary Theory from Vasyl’ Stus Donetsk National University. In 2020, she founded the Ukrainian art and literature journal Craft Magazine (craftmagazine.net), which publishes both in Ukrainian and English in-depth interviews with the most talented and creative Ukrainians to showcase to the world the leading voices of modern, free Ukraine.
Moazzam Sheikh was born in Lahore and moved to the SF Bay Area in 1985. He studied cinema at San Francisco State before earning his MLIS from San Jose State University. He is a librarian at the San Francisco Public Library. He has translated literature across Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi and English. He has edited two anthologies of South Asian literature and is the author of two collections of short stories and three novellas: A Footbridge to Hell Called Love (2022); Unsolaced Faces We Meet in Our Dreams (2024), and We Don't Love Here Anymore (2025). He is also the founding editor of a magazine dedicated to South Asian American literature called Weavers Literary Review. He lives with his wife in SF and has two sons.
Danielle P. Williams is a Black and Chamorro poet, translator, essayist, and spoken-word artist from Columbia, South Carolina, who earned an MFA in poetry from George Mason University in 2021. Her chapbook, Who All Gon’ Be There?, was a finalist for the 2021 Button Poetry Chapbook Contest and selected for publication by Backbone Press. Her debut collection, Chamorrita Song, was published by the University of Arizona Press in January 2026. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets, and Best of the Net, with fellowships from Open Mouth Poetry Retreat, Palm Beach Poetry Festival, The Watering Hole, and The Cheuse Center. Her poetry and nonfiction appear in Gulf Coast Journal, Indiana Review, The Pinch, Hobart, Ninth Letter, Cobra Milk, and more. She is based in Los Angeles.
Katherine E. Young is the author of two poetry collections, including Day of the Border Guards, and two chapbooks. Her work appears in journals such as Prairie Schooner and The Iowa Review, and has been adapted into film, music, and dance. She translates contemporary writing from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine, including works by Anna Starobinets and Akram Aylisli. Her translations have won international awards, including the 2022 Granum Foundation Translation Prize. Young has received honors from the National Endowment for the Arts and served as Arlington, Virginia’s inaugural Poet Laureate (2016–2018).
