In the poetry of Anna Akhmatova the 19th century myth of Petersburg, the accursed, unreal city, is filtered through the vision of a poet born in Imperial Russia and destined to confront the terrors of Soviet rule. The city that emerges embodies loss and dislocation, continuity and miraculous survival. This scholarly and imaginative study (New York Review of Books) convincingly demonstrates that a good part of Akhmatovas verse could never have been written but for the Petersburg environment.(Russian Review). An extremely productive new approachjargon-free, highly recommended for specialists and informed readers.Library Journal
Sharon Leiter has written and published poetry and fiction, as well as literary criticism and creative nonfiction. Her second book of poems, The Dream of Leaving, was published in 2007 by Main Street Rag, after being selected a finalist in its nationwide competition. Her most recent scholarly work, Critical Companion to Emily Dickinson: A Literary Reference to Her Life and Work was released by Facts on File, New York, in November 2006.
She is the author of a previous volume of poetry, The Lady and the Bailiff of Time (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1974) and a literary study of the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, Akhmatova's Petersburg (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983; European edition: Cambridge University Press, 1983). This work was republished in 2000 under the Authors Guild backinprint.com imprint.
Leiter was born on August 12, 1942, in Brooklyn, New York, to a family of Russian-Jewish immigrants. She received a B.A., magna cum laude, with honors in Comparative Literature, from Brandeis University in 1963, and a Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1976. A specialist in 20th century Russian literature, who wrote her dissertation on the poet Osip Mandelstam and has published several articles on Russian poetry, she taught at the University of Virginia between 1976 and 1983. She went on to a career as a government analyst in Russian affairs. She is currently an adjunct professor in the Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies Program, University of Virginia, where she teaches courses on poetry.
In 1990 she won a Virginia Prize for Fiction for a short story manuscript, Dream Fatigue. A revised version of that manuscript was a semi-finalist in the 1995 Iowa Short Fiction/John Simmons Short Fiction Awards. Her poems and stories have been published in numerous literary journals. One of her published stories was selected for "100 Other Distinguished Stories of 1987" in Best American Short Stories of 1988.
Most recently, her fiction and poetry have appeared in Atlanta Review, Cimarron Review, The Georgia Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Pembroke Magazine, and The New Delta Review, Streetlight, Tough Times Companion, Oasis, and many other literary reviews. She won the 2003 poetry competition co-sponsored by the Charlottesville Writing Center and WMRA, Central Virginia's National Public Radio Station. Her nonfiction articles have appeared in Moment, The Albemarle Review, and Virginia. She is the recipient of several fellowships to the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Sweet Briar, Virginia.
Since 1994 she has made her home in Palmyra, Virginia, with her husband, Darryl, an astrophysicist. An active member of the local writing scene, she is poetry editor of Streetlight, Charlottesville's community journal of literature and the arts, and a past president of the Charlottesville Chapter of the Virginia Writers Club.
