An Evening with Irina Zhorov in conversation with Boyce Upholt

Join us Thursday, October 5th to celebrate Irina Zhorov’s debut book, Lost Believers!

Irina Zhorov will be in conversation with Boyce Upholt.

“Zhorov deftly explores the landscape of the two women’s lives and the choices they must make as their worlds converge, mapping the forces of faith and fate, progress and preservation onto the backdrop of 1970s Soviet life.” —Scientific American

A rich, immersive debut novel, inspired by true events, about a meeting between two women in 1970s Soviet Russia—a deeply religious homesteader living in isolation with her family on the Siberian taiga and an ambitious scientist—that irrevocably changes the course of both of their lives.

Irina Zhorov was born in Uzbekistan, in the Soviet Union, and moved to Philadelphia on the eve of its dissolution. After failing to make use of a geology degree she received an MFA from the University of Wyoming. She’s worked as a journalist for more than a decade, reporting primarily on environmental issues.

Boyce Upholt is a writer and journalist based in New Orleans, focused on the human place in a more-than-human world. His writing has appeared in National Geographic, The Atlantic, and The New Republic, and won the 2019 James Beard Award for investigative journalism. His first book, The Great River: the Making and Unmaking of the Mississippi, will be published by W.W. Norton in June.