22/10/2025
News of Judith Hemschemeyer's death this last summer came to Zephyr late. Here and now, we want to acknowledge our appreciation of her life.
In the late 1970s, Susan Gubernat was a student and colleague of Judith's at Rutgers University, and, in 1983, as one of the editors of Zephyr Press, she brought Judith's translations of Anna Akhmatova to Zephyr. Founding editor Ed Hogan, Susan, and Leora Zeitlin understood that Judith’s work presented Zephyr with a rare opportunity. With the help of many others, we devoted the next seven years to bringing the first edition of "The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova" to press.
Judith had dedicated herself to learning Russian specifically to translate Akhmatova. In between her own fine poems, she forged a style that could bring not only individual poems to English-speaking readers, but a consistent voice that spoke of love and grief, rage and acceptance, for more than a half century of poetry, from the Russian Empire to the fall of Stalinism. The original publication of these translations was named one of the Best Books of 1990 by "The New York Times" and has remained the canonical source for Akhmatova in English.
Judith continued to be not only a star of Zephyr publishing, contributing translations of Inna Lisnianskaia to the anthology "In the Grip of Strange Thoughts," but also a stalwart and generous supporter of our work. Although we knew she had been in declining health, her recent death came as a sad surprise.
She will be very much missed, but will continue to live through the work of her own poetry and the Akhmatova translations to serve as her monument.
