Just in: Olga’s poetry manuscript Wolf Rondo in A Minor was selected as finalist for the 2026 Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Award. https://laurabosspoetryfoundation.org/news/2026-laura-boss-narrative-poetry-award-winner-and-finalists

Just in: The First Man Born in Antarctica is included in Magma 96: The Antarctic and will be published in November 2026.

Just in: Olga’s poetry manuscript Sweet Dark Things was selected as a finalist for the 2025 Barrow Street Poetry Prize. Two of her poetry manuscripts, Sweet Dark Things and Mona Lisa Is a Dolphin, also reached the last round of finalists of the 2025 APR Stern Prize.

Olga Maslova is a Ukrainian-American poet, librettist, and theater designer, born and raised in Kharkiv, Ukraine. She is the winner of LitMag’s 2025 Emily Dickinson Award for Poetry. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Tupelo Press’s The Writes of Spring anthology, Beloit Poetry Journal, New Ohio Review (nominated for Best of the Net), New American Writing, Plume, Frontier Poetry (second place, 2023 Ekphrastic Poetry Prize), Asymptote, RHINO, Strange Horizons, ONE ART, Naugatuck River Review (semifinalist, Naugatuck Prize), and elsewhere. She is a 2025 MacDowell Fellow and Fulbright U.S. Scholar.

In 2025, Olga was selected as a Visiting Teaching Artist for the Poetry Foundation’s Forms & Features workshop series, where she designed and led “The Algebra of the Aha Moment”. Her essay of the same name was published by the Poetry Foundation in 2026. Her manuscript Light Travels was a semifinalist for the 2024 St. Lawrence Book Award.

Before immigrating to the United States, Olga worked as a metal turner, taught theater at the Kharkiv Juvenile Detention Center for Girls, and worked at one of the first Russian Waldorf schools. She holds a BFA in directing from Kharkiv’s Academy of Culture, an MFA in dramaturgy from Stony Brook University, and an MFA in costume and set design from NYU Tisch. She is currently Associate Professor of Costume Design at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her costume design work can be seen at https://olgamaslova.com/

Olga Maslova’s theatrical work has been staged across the United States, South America, and Europe, with designs presented at Teatro Mayor in Bogotá, Teatro Amazonas in Manaus, and Harris Theater in Chicago. Her libretti have been performed at the Tretyakov Gallery and Zaryadye Concert Hall in Moscow, as well as at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts in the United States. Her designs have been described as “spectacular” by Opera News and “madly inventive” by Backstage.