Anna Badkhen
From 6 June to 8 July 2025

Anna Badkhen was born and grew up in the Soviet Union before emigrating to the United States. She is a writer, and teacher of creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania. Her writing about civilians in war zones as a former war correspondent received the Joel R. Seldin Award from Psychologists for Social Responsibility. She has published in The New York Review of Books, Granta, Harper’s, and The New York Times, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is the author of seven books, including Bright Unbearable Reality (New York Review of Books, 2022), a collection of essays on migration and human connectedness at the time of geopolitical conflicts. It was longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award and the 2023 Jan Michalski Prize.