Ani Gjika (Poetry 2010)’s first book of poems, BREAD ON RUNNING WATERS, has just been released by Fenway Press. You can order your copy of her remarkable debut here.
In her wonderful introduction to the collection, Rosanna Warren lauds the way that “Gjika has turned English, her adopted language, into a subtle instrument, a beautifully judged voicing that never slides into self-pity or melodrama, never loses its cool…The justness of Gjika’s phrasing has everything to do with her exact and trustworthy weighing of justice, the unspoken norms of decency that stand, immensely implied, in the background of these poems whether set in or out of Albania.”
Born and raised in Albania, Ani Gjika moved to the U.S. at age 18 and studied poetry writing at Simmons College and Boston University. She is the recipient of a 2010 Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship, which took her to Albania, and winner of a 2010 Robert Fitzgerald Translation Prize. Bread on Running Waters was a finalist for the 2011 Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize and 2011 May Sarton New Hampshire Book Prize. Ani is working on an anthology of poetry in translation by Albanian women.
Congratulations, Ani!
