Beyond the Mother Tongue: Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry in Conversation with Artemii Levkoy on Exophony

(RU/ENG subs) 0:00 — Let’s go! 2:17 — Introducing Kristina and exophony 6:47 — “Are you a Russian author?“ — “I’m American“ 9:26 — “What connects an author to a literary tradition?“ — “Humanity“ 11:28 — Are non-native authors treated with purism or tolerance in the English-speaking world? 15:36 — “Does writing in a New English make one more original and attractive in the readers’ eyes?“ 17:39 — Nabokov and losing one’s mother tongue 21:17 — “Should exophonic writers strive to emulate natives or is the New English literature becoming the new norm?“ 24:36 — “I am writing by my inner ear“ 28:33 — Do exophonic writers from non-postcolonial countries also belong to the New English literature? 30:44 — Is it fair to speak of New Russian literatures in post-Soviet countries: Kurkov, Kabanov, Alexievich? 36:40 — “Are you kidding? My mother is always critical!“ 44:40 — Between Dog and Wolf: a synopsis and various editions of the book 51:51 — “Where I came from, we talked about literature, sex, and politics“ 57:58 — “I write because I would die of silence otherwise... I try to reconcile the ugliness and the beauty my motherland has brought into the world“ 1:00:10 — Characters in the novel and their prototypes 1:04:52 — “Why do so many Russians have a hard time overcoming their nostalgia for the Soviet past?“ — “The past they can understand, the present — not so much“. 1:13:21 — Russian leaders need to learn the Rogerian argument: in a debate, you have to find valid points in your opponent’s position and build your own argument based on it. 1:14:36 — Q&A “How did you start writing in English?“ 1:19:18 — Q&A “Do you attach a language to a person?“ 1:22:12 — Q&A “Do you think of a story in English or Russian?“ 1:24:54 — Q&A “Do you have a sense of grief over not writing in Russian?“ 1:27:16 — Excerpt from Between Dog and Wolf 1:33:40 — Epilogue: Softest of Tongues by Vladimir Nabokov Creative writing in foreign languages, also known as exophony or translingualism, has been practised since time immemorial. However, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, it multiplied and intensified as a consequence of patterns of migration, changing demographics and the rise of English as a global language. What challenges do writers and poets face when working in a foreign tongue? Does the language of writing shape an author’s artistic identity or connect them to a specific literary tradition? With English as a well-established lingua franca, should authors strive to emulate native speakers, or is the “New“ English literature becoming the new normal? Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry, a rising star in the American literary scene, will address these and other questions in a conversation with our Culture Officer Artemii Levkoy. Kristina was born in Armenia and raised in Soviet Russia. She moved to the USA in 1995, after having witnessed perestroika and the fall of the Iron Curtain, and became an established author overseas. Her first novel ‘Between Dog and Wolf’, published to rapturous reviews in the USA as The Orchard, captures the lives of four Soviet teenagers who are about to lose their country and one another and who struggle to survive, save their friendship, recover all that has been left behind. The interview took place on 18 November 2023 at Worcester College, University of Oxford. A signed copy of the book can be purchased directly from the publisher here: To find out more about Kristina, you can visit her personal website: ONRS extends its gratitude to The London Group of Multilingual Writers () and The Indigo Press () for their help in organising this event. The interview was filmed by