A Dove Under My Hand is the first published collection of Marina Tsvetaeva's lesbian writings, poetry, and The Story of Sonechka in one volume

Infused with sapphic desire, A Dove Under My Hand: Sapphic Writings by Marina Tsvetaeva presents three works: Story of Sonechka, “Girlfriend Poems,” and “Letter to an Amazon,” all newly translated by Sonja Franeta. Story of Sonechka, a novella, is composed of fragments, conversations, and verse exploring Tsvetaeva’s romance with Russian actress, Sonya Holliday. The “Girlfriend Poems” are Tsvetaeva’s love lyrics to Russian poet Sofia Parnok. Seven additional poems extend this lyrical cycle. Contemplating queer love and the tension between romantic passion and maternal instinct, “Letter to an Amazon” is Tsvetaeva’s response to Natalie Barney. Expertly translated, all these writings explore lesbian love in rich and complex ways, brimming with emotional intensity and literary intelligence.

An afterword by Olgerta Kharitonova, publisher of the former Russian zine Ostrov, offers a vivid, multifaceted portrait of Tsvetaeva’s meaning to queer women in Russia. A Dove Under My Hand highlights Tsvetaeva’s lesbian writings and cements her enduring legacy as a writer of radical emotional honesty and queer literary defiance.

Praise for Marina Tsvetaeva
“As a lyrical poet, her passion and daring linguistic experimentation mark her striking chronicler of her times and the depths of the human condition.”
— Author Peycho Kanev

“Tsvetaeva was… absolutely natural, and fantastically self-willed… Her willfulness was not just a matter of temperament but a way of life… She always needed to experience every emotion to the maximum, seeking ecstasy not only in love, but in abandonment, loneliness, and disaster as well.”
— Nadezhda Mandelstam

Praise for Sonja Franeta
"This voice of honesty rings through Sonja's book. It is particularly valuable in Russia at this time, when we have been forbidden to talk about LGBT issues."
—Olga Gert, editor of Moscow feminist journal Ostrov (Island)

"What makes Franeta's work so valuable and haunting is not only her observant and touching portraits of the people she meets--Siberian lesbians, transsexual train conductors, gay men who survived the gulag, and a host of others--but also the reader's awareness that the remarkable flowering of post-Soviet LGBT life and culture, portrayed so eloquently by Franeta in these pages, appears to be disappearing quickly in the current Putin era."
—David Tuller, author of Cracks in the Iron Closet

Marina Tsvetaeva (1892 - 1941) was a Russian poet and writer known for her emotional, innovative verse and her exploration of love, exile, and personal tragedy. Living through the Russian Revolution, emigration, and Stalinist repression, her life and work reflect the turmoil of early 20th-century Russia. Her works include, Mileposts (1921), After Russia (1928), and the long poems: Poem of the End (1923), Poem of the Mountain (1926), and the dramatic narrative The Ratcatcher (1925).

Sonja Franeta is a translator, writer, educator, and activist born in the Bronx to an immigrant Yugoslav family. She received a BA from New York University in 1973, majoring in English and Russian. After receiving an MA in Russian literature from New York University, she earned another Master’s in Comparative Literature in 1976 from the University of California at Berkeley. Her interest in Russia crystallized when she joined the first queer delegation to Russia in 1991, organized by IGLHRC. Sonja continued to be in Russia during the 1990s in its transformative period. She taught English in Moscow, managed a project for wheelchair activists in Central Siberia, and organized a queer film festival in Tomsk. Her translations and articles about Russian queers, her poems and stories have appeared in the U.S. and internationally.
In 2004, she published Rozovye Flamingo (Pink Flamingos: 10 Siberian Interviews, in Russian), in collaboration with friends at the LGBT Archives in Moscow. She returned to teaching (English and ESL) in the San Francisco area, all the while translating both literary and technical texts. In 2015, Sonja published her memoir My Pink Road to Russia: Tales of Amazons, Peasants and Queers, now translated into Russian. In 2017, she translated into English and self-published Pink Flamingos. Other interviews are available in the Pink Flamingo Archives. She continues to read and translate other Russian favorites, especially poet Marina Tsvetaeva. She and her spouse, Sue, have lived part of the time in St. Petersburg, Florida and in lovely Laredo on the north coast of Spain. She has always loved books and continues reading them and making them. Writing and translating are her passions.