Nikita Nelin

Story Weaver

Fiction.

Nonfiction..

Immersive Journalism…

Narrative Guide….

The Obligatory Bio in the 3rd-person:

Nikita Nelin was born in Moscow, Russia and immigrated to the U.S in 1989. He has lived in Austria and Italy, and has traveled the U.S extensively. He received the Sean O’Faolain prize for short fiction, the Summer Literary Seminars prize for nonfiction, and the Dogwood Literary Prize in Nonfiction, as well as being chosen as a finalist for the Restless Books Immigrant prize and the Dzanc Books prize. His work has been published in print and online. Nikita has conducted research through the Harriman Institute as well as translation through Yale Press, and has written on the convergence between fringe and at-large cultural trends for the Hannah Arendt Center. He holds an MFA in fiction from Brooklyn College, is a 2019 Associate Fellow at The Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and the Humanities, and is a member of the Southern Experience Collective.

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03/19/20 LVP

April 02, 2020 / Nikita Nelin

She took me the edge,

because she wanted me to see the horizon more clearly,

and I tried jumping

because I believed I could fly.

She asked that I touch the soil

so that I knew where all life comes from,

and I stuffed my stomach with it

because my first word was ‘more.’

She shared the secret of family with me

and I plotted her wallet,

because capitalism was complicated.

She asked I write

some

thing,

and I went silent for a decade;

she worked all night,

and I snuck around the lower realms of the world.

Don’t judge too much.

It’s a Russian story

a Jewish story,

a mother-son kind of thing –

you know,

the kind of thing you laugh about on holidays,

when first introducing your family to strangers

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