Translator Panel with Anne O. Fisher and Kristen Renee Miller

Join Tomorrow Bookstore for a conversation with two literary translators , Annie O. Fisher and Kristen Renee Miller with Tomorrow Bookstore's very own Julia Breakey as the moderator!

We will be chatting about translation in literature as a skill set in the industry and discussing both Fisher and Miller's latest work. This event is for any literary fans, but especially those who love to read work in translation. Come listen in on this discussion to learn what it takes to bring the books you love to life and how translators keep the art of storytelling throughout all languages.

About Anne O. Fisher

Anne O. Fisher is a Russian to English translator. Recent translations include the banned gay romance novel Pioneer Summer by Elena Malisova and Kateryna Sylvanova (Abrams, 2025) and Ukraine, War, Love: A Donetsk Diary by Olena Stiazhkina (Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 2024). Fisher has also translated books by Ksenia Buksha, Ilf and Petrov, and – with co-translator Derek Mong – Maxim Amelin, as well as journalism by Shura Burtin, non-fiction by Sigizmund Krzhizhakovsky, fiction by Ilya Danishevsky, and poetry by Alex Averbuch. Fisher is Co-Editor and Translation Editor of the literary journal . Read more at www.anneofisher.com/.

About Pioneer Summer

Pioneer Summer is fascinating in that you can read it two ways: one, just as a fun and engrossing summer romance, or two, as a symbol of what is going on with LGBTQ people and their rights in Russia. Over the past 10-15 years, Russia has mounted a crushing three-prong attack on LGBTQ rights in the country, and Pioneer Summer has been the catalyst for two of the last three prongs: 1.In 2014 the "Law for the Purpose of Protecting Children from Information Advocating a Denial of Traditional Family Values" was passed, meaning that print matter containing depictions of queer folk had to be labeled "+18" to warn that the material was for adults only; 2. In 2022, this law was expanded to ban all depictions of queer folk for all ages--not just restrict such depictions to adults. This new crackdown was caused in large part by the huge sales of Pioneer Summer after it was published in 2021, and the book was cited in much of the public discussion of the "need" for such a law; 3.in January 2024, the Russian Supreme Court passed a resolution declaring the "international LGBT movement"--which does not exist!--an extremist organization, thus creating an environment where anything anyone does that has to do with LGBT representation could be portrayed by the authorities as "promoting the agenda of an extremist organization" and thus be criminally prosecutable. Pioneer Summer was widely cited in the discussion for the "need" for this new declaration as well. And in May 2025, employees of the Russian publisher that originally published Pioneer Summer, along with employees of two other publishers, were investigated for extremism and their homes and workplaces were searched; three of these employees are currently being charged with crimes.

The two co-authors of the Pioneer Summer trilogy (the English translation of book 2 will be out in 2026, book 3 in 2027), Ukrainian Kateryna Sylvanova and Russian Elena Malisova, are good friends who met online as readers of fan fiction on the Russian fan fiction site FicBook. Pioneer Summer had a huge following on FicBook, but after it was published as a physical book by Popcorn Books in 2021, the coauthors got so many death threats, especially after the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, that they left the country later that year. Kateryna returned to her native town in Ukraine, and Elena and her husband got asylum to Germany (which wisely opened a new category of asylum that year for persons suffering persecution due to their creative production, meaning many highly skilled Russian citizens found safe haven there). Apart from the fact that Kateryna is living with constant drone and missile attacks, both of them are doing okay these days.

About Kristen Renee Miller:

Kristen Renee Miller is the director and editor-in-chief at Sarabande Books. An award-winning poet and translator, she is a 2023 NEA Fellow and the translator of two books from the French by Ilnu Nation poet Marie-Andrée Gill. She is the recipient of honors from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, AIGA, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Gulf Coast Prize in Translation, and the American Literary Translators Association. Her work can be found widely, including in Poetry Magazine, The Nation, and Best New Poets. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky.

About Heating the Outdoors:

Winner of the 2020 Indigenous Voices Award for Best Published Poetry in French

Irreverent and transcendent, lyrical and slang, Heating the Outdoors is an endlessly surprising new work from award-winning poet Marie-Andrée Gill.

In these micropoems, writing and love are acts of decolonial resilience. Rooted in Nitassinan, the territory and ancestral home of the Ilnu Nation, they echo the Ilnu oral tradition in Gill's interrogation and reclamation of the language, land, and interpersonal intimacies distorted by imperialism. They navigate her interior landscape--of heartbreak, humor, and, ultimately, unrelenting light--amidst the boreal geography.

Heating the Outdoors describes the yearnings for love, the domestic monotony of post-breakup malaise, and the awkward meeting of exes. As the lines between interior and exterior begin to blur, Gill's poems, here translated by Kristen Renee Miller, become a record of the daily rituals and ancient landscapes that inform her identity not only as a lover, then ex, but also as an Ilnu and Québécoise woman.

About Julia Breakey (moderator):

Julia Breakey is the co-owner and head buyer of Tomorrow Bookstore, an independent bookstore in downtown Indianapolis. Prior to living amongst books, Breakey was a video editor and filmmaker, most recently with Young and Laramore. They hold a BA in Film & Media Studies with a specialization in Screen Production from the University of Cape Town. They live in Indianapolis with their partner, Jake, and three pets.

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