Marianna Goncharova shares her short stories

Working with the students in the Russian Senior Seminar, Marianna Goncharova, Russian Writer-in-Residence, presented several of her Russian short stories to the College in English.

Ms. Goncharova graciously thanked her translators: Jacob Cohn, Charles Eddy, Jordan Matosky, Rachel Morgan, and Luke Panciera and praised the students' work. Both she and the students noted the difficulty with which the stories were translated into English. The students recognized that the idiomatic differences in languages made translating the story, while guarding the voice of the author, quite challenging.

After the reading, the floor was open to questions where one audience member asked the author where she prefers to write or if she finds one specific place that opens her mind to writing more than another. Ms. Goncharova responded that she writes anywhere and all of the time. She writes about people she meets and loves all of her characters. She concluded with how grateful she is to have had the opportunity to work with such passionate and intellectual students as she has met at Grinnell College.