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Suppressed Russian Author Subject of Discussion

February 8, 2005

USM Professor of Russian Charlotte Rosenthal will speak about research she conducted into the life of Russian author Anastasiia Verbitskaia last summer. The free talk, "Writer and Reader: The Case of Anastasiia Verbitskaia," will take place at 7 p.m., Thursday, February 10, on the seventh floor of USM's Glickman Family Library, Forest Ave., Portland.

Verbitskaia wrote popular fiction before the 1917 Communist Revolution, outselling even Chekhov and Tolstoy. Deemed counter-revolutionary, the Communists burned and banned her books, and she died in 1928, dishonored and living in obscurity in Moscow.

Rosenthal, under the support of a Fulbright Research Grant, spent countless hours in state archives in St. Petersburg and Moscow, pouring through Verbitskaia's letters, manuscripts, fan mail, and belongings. She plans a book on her work, and hopes for an anthology that will reintroduce Verbitskaia to Russian audiences.

This discussion is part of the USM College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Scholars Forum.

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