Mikhail Kuzmin (1872–1936) was a poet most famous for writing Russia’s first openly-gay novel, Wings (1907), and his poem cycle, Trout Breaks the Ice (1929). Kuzmin is an over-looked but important figure: a multi-talented, multi-media writer whose work spans genre (prose, poetry, libretto, cinema), periods (Romanticism and Modernism), and two historical moments (before and after the Russian Revolution). He influenced the Acmeists with his manifesto “On Beautiful Clarity” (O Prekrasnoi Iasnosti) and was among poets like Osip Mandelstam confronting the potentials of the new medium of cinema in verse. 

Simona Schneider’s translations have appeared in Harper’s, The New Yorker, Literature Across Frontiers. She was a finalist for Three Percent’s prize for translations in Dmitry Golynko’s As It Turned Out (UDP). She is a media scholar and received a PhD in Comparative Literature with an emphasis in Film & Media from the University of California, Berkeley.