ANDREW D. KAUFMAN
Founder of the renowned social justice-oriented education program “Books Behind Bars”
Creator of forthcoming podcast and tie-in book about the human face of criminal justice
Author of The Gambler Wife, PEN America Finalist and forthcoming major motion picture starring Aimee Lou Wood and Matt Dillon
Stream the PBS documentary about Andrew’s “Books Behind Bars” program.
ANDREW KAUFMAN
Andrew D. Kaufman is an author, educational entrepreneur, and Russian literature scholar whose work has been featured on The Today Show, NPR, PBS, and Oprah.com as well as in the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Moscow Times.
A nationally recognized expert on social justice-oriented teaching innovation, Dr. Kaufman is Founder of Books Behind Bars, an educational program that brings together incarcerated and non-incarcerated youth and adults to explore questions of meaning, value, and social justice through conversations about Russian literature classics. The program, which Kaufman created as a professor at the University of Virginia, has been featured in the Washington Post, on The Today Show, NPR, and Russian national television. It is the subject of the feature documentary, Seats at the Table, which aired nationally on PBS, and is the inspiration behind Kaufman’s forthcoming book and tie-in podcast, which invites listeners to wrestle with
criminal justice while taking a journey to the depths of their shared humanity.
In addition to his teaching innovation, Kaufman holds a Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Stanford University, and he is the author of The Gambler Wife: A True Story of Love, Risk, and the Woman Who Saved Dostoyevsky, which was a Finalist for the 2022 PEN America Literary Award in Biography and is being adapted into a major motion picture starring Aimee Lou Wood and Matt Dillon. Kaufman is also the author of Give War and Peace a Chance: Tolstoyan Wisdom for Troubled Times and Understanding Tolstoy, as well as co-author of Russian for Dummies, now in its third edition. He is a featured Tolstoy expert on Oprah.com, and is frequently invited to discuss Russian literature and culture on national and international television and radio programs.
Dr. Kaufman is an in-demand keynote speaker who has spoken at TEDx, the Aspen Institute, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Leo Tolstoy Museum and Estate at Yasnaya Polyana, and at book clubs and libraries, corporations, prisons, and colleges and universities across the United States. A professionally trained actor and long-time college professor, he is an entertaining and inspirational speaker. He draws on the wisdom of great books as well as his journey as an educator to offer audiences nourishment for the mind and soul, while also providing them with practical insights that are immediately applicable to their own lives.
To learn more about Dr. Kaufman, please visit his website at AndrewDKaufman.com.
Speech topics
Reclaiming Your Power and Purpose in Troubled Times
Scholar and educational entrepreneur Andrew Kaufman shares inspirational lessons about reclaiming your power and purpose in life’s most challenging moments. Recounting what he learned from the sudden death of his father, encounters with inmates in his prison classes, and his bold decision to abandon a university professorship to pursue a higher passion, Kaufman inspires listeners to dig deep and discover new paths to meaning and fulfillment no matter the circumstances.
Transforming Yesterday’s Mistakes Into Tomorrow’s Triumphs
In this entertaining keynote scholar and educational entrepreneur Andrew Kaufman tells the improbable story of how, as a young man fresh out of a Stanford Ph.D. program, he struggled as a Hollywood actor, gambled wildly in Las Vegas, and was bilked out of large sums of money by an unscrupulous business partner. Some two decades later, however, those roller-coaster years would become the inspiration behind some of Kaufman’s greatest creative and professional successes: four books (one of which is being adapted into a feature film), a nationally recognized prison education program that is the subject of a PBS documentary, and a university professorship. Kaufman shares how his experiences have taught him the value of taking risks, believing in yourself, and transforming yesterday’s mistakes into tomorrow’s triumphs.
Rewrite Your Destiny By Harnessing the Power of Second Chances
Scholar and educational entrepreneur Andrew Kaufman has spent a career working with outcasts, addicts, and incarcerated youth and adults in his prison classes. In this keynote he shares riveting stories from his unique encounters that demonstrate how any of us has the power to conquer past demons and transform our lives for the better no matter where we come from or may have done.
Books
The Gambler Wife: A True Story of Love, Risk, and the Woman Who Saved Dostoyevsky
An intimate new portrait of the bold and determined woman who saved Dostoyevsky's life—and became a pioneer in Russian literary history.
In the fall of 1866—against the backdrop of Russia's first feminist movement—an independent-minded young stenographer named Anna Snitkina went to work for a writer she idolized: Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The volatile and visionary novelist was already a celebrated literary provocateur, yet Anna found him "terribly unhappy, broken, tormented," sickened by epilepsy, anguished by the recent loss of his wife—and in thrall to a gambling addiction that kept him on the verge of emotional and financial ruin.
Book out on AUGUST 31, 2021
Understanding Tolstoy
Understanding Tolstoy recreates Tolstoy’s lifelong artistic and spiritual journey, taking readers to the core of the writer’s world through nuanced close readings of his major novels and novellas.
Give War and Peace a Chance: Tolstoyan Wisdom for Troubled Times
From a popular Tolstoy scholar: an entertaining, thought-provoking, and accessible argument for why War and Peace is more relevant to readers now than ever.