Writing chapter, book and verse of new land

IN the Soviet Union, Viktor Rayzman was a prominent metallurgist, the author of eight scientific books and numerous journal articles.

He came to the United States in 1991, fleeing anti-Semitism in his native land. Faced with the eye-opening ups and downs of starting over in a new country, he felt a creative urge stir within him for the first time.

Rayzman is now a published poet and one of five Russian emigre writers who will read from their work at the West Hollywood Book Fair this Sunday. Many of Rayzman’s poems are about the people, places and events he knew in St. Petersburg, but he said he never would have written about those things had he not left them behind for the Southern California sunshine.

“I needed some push like immigration to feel myself like a poet,” said Rayzman, 71. “Immigration was a very strong feeling for me. It was new and terrible, and good luck too.”

Vilen Chernyak, a retired engineer who is also on the book fair’s “Russian Voices of Hollywood” panel, was already an accomplished poet when he left Kiev in 2000. But the themes that preoccupied him changed after he settled in West Hollywood.

Where once he limited himself to personal reflections -- political topics were too dangerous -- Chernyak now writes in the voice of the everyman immigrant enamored of his new American freedoms and privileges.

West Hollywood is best-known for its gay culture, but the city is home to an estimated 3,000 immigrants from the former Soviet Union, many of them Jews who came at least in part to escape anti-Semitism severe enough to derail careers and make people fear for their safety.

The West Hollywood Book Fair has had a Russian writers panel each year since the city began holding the event in 2002.

Most of the poetry and prose will be read in the original Russian, but an interpreter will help bridge the gap for English speakers. The readings will be intermingled with performances of Russian songs.

The book fair, sponsored by the city of West Hollywood and LA Weekly, will also include panels on vampire novels, gay and lesbian literature and Japanese manga. Authors who will speak at the fair include Jackie Collins, Mike Mignola, Tommy Chong and Denise Hamilton.

The local Russian emigre community is an ideal breeding ground for serious writers, said Inna Sanina, the panel’s moderator. Many, like Rayzman, are highly educated professionals who are inspired to write by their experiences as recent immigrants and by the extreme contrast between California and Russia.

About 40 Russian immigrants are members of a literature club that meets each Thursday at Plummer Park.

“These people experienced life in two countries -- they know what is bad. Then they find something good, and when they compare, they really know what is better,” said Sanina, who will also read from her own work.

For book fair panelist Galina Rostova, who worked as a physicist and then a television journalist in Russia, life as a new immigrant inspired not odes to freedom but a travel guide to Los Angeles -- the first in Russian, she believes.

Rostova, 48, is working on a second guidebook featuring the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas and other destinations in the western United States.

“People try to go to this city, try to search for the light in this city, this beautiful city,” Rostova said of Los Angeles. “The light here is No. 1, and dreams come true. There’s a lot of freedom and opportunity to grow.”

Another panelist, Leonid Vaysman, is among the Russian immigrants who have dared to attempt poetry, that most precise of the literary arts, in their adopted tongue.

In an English-language poem titled “The California Waltz,” Vaysman writes:

The angels’ world,

Los Angeles,

This country is our love.

We like to whirl

Along its ways,

Admire it from above.

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West Hollywood Book Fair

Where: West Hollywood Park, 647 N. San Vicente Blvd., West Hollywood

When: Sunday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The “Russian Voices of Hollywood” panel begins at 11 a.m.

Price: Free

Info: (323) 848-6400, www.westhollywoodbookfair.org