Tomas Venclova

Tomas Venclova was born in Klaipeda, Lithuania, in 1937, and graduated from Vilnius University. He is a scholar, poet, and translator of literature. Venclova was a founding member of the Lithuanian Helsinki Group, which monitored Soviet violations of human rights. Threatened with sanctions, he emigrated in 1977. Collections of his poems have been published in English as Dialogue in Winter (1999), and The Junction: Selected Poems (2009). A new selected poems is in the works. Venclova has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Yotvingian Prize in 2005, the Poetry Spring Mairionis Prize in 2017, the Lithuanian National Prize in 2000, and the 2002 Prize of Two Nations, which he received jointly with Czeslaw Milosz. He is professor emeritus at Yale University, and now lives full time in Vilnius.