Svetlana Kitto

Svetlana Kitto works as a writer, teacher and oral historian in New York City. She has an MA in Oral History from Columbia University, and has presented her research on AIDS in the queer community at a number of academic conferences. She writes fiction and nonfiction, and has taught oral history and creative writing workshops at a homeless youth drop-in center in Chinatown, NYC, and a high school in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn. 

"So on one hand like I grew up being told that the Russians saved my grandfather’s life, because they did, but on the other hand like he’s Latvian, so -- my grandparents just had this very sort of mixed thing. Because on one hand they were Jewish, but on the other hand they were Latvian, and so they had Jewish allegiances and then they also grew up in Latvia and loved their country."