Ellen Hinsey, curator of the “Literature and Democracy” series and NER’s international correspondent since 2013, has written long-form journalism about democracy in Russia, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and former East Germany.

Her essays are collected in Mastering the Past: Reports on Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe and the Rise of Illiberalism (Telos, 2017). She is also the author of ten books of poetry, essay, dialogue, and translation, including, most recently, The Invisible Fugue (Wildhouse, 2024). Other collections include The Illegal Age, which explores the rise of authoritarianism, Update on the Descent, The White Fire of Time,and Cities of Memory (Yale University Series Award). Her work has appeared in publications such as the New York Times, The New Yorker, the Irish Times, Poetry,and New England Review. A former Berlin Prize fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, she has most recently been a visiting professor at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany, and is currently based in Paris.