Today we’re happy to share a lovely Pif Magazine article in which our alumna Ani Gjika (Poetry 2010) is interviewed by Derek Alger.
In the interview, Ani says the following about her experience at BU:
“For the first time in my life I was workshopping poems in a group of highly talented people. I felt ambitious at first, then pretty ordinary, then realized that the strengths everyone had were a testament to the high expectations and strengths of the program. I learned a little later into the program that being there with those other 7 poets and our incredibly talented faculty (Robert Pinsky, Louise Glück and Rosanna Warren in poetry), it was never about whose work was better than whose, but about what each of us could learn from one another.”
Ani’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.
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 and thank you, Ani!
