Leksikon fun der Nayer Yidisher Literatur

לעקסיקאָן פֿון דער נײַער ייִדישער ליטעראַטור

The pseudonym of Dine Kipnes-Shapiro, a poet and translator. She was the sister of the writer Itsik Kipnis and the wife of the poet Monye Shapiro. She was born in the town of Sloveshne (Slovechne), Volhynia, Ukraine, to a father who worked as a tanner. She received both a Jewish and a general education, initially in her hometown and later in Kiev where she completed a Jewish pedagogical course of study. For a time she worked in a children’s home, later in a Jewish middle school, later still as an assistant librarian at the Winchevsky Library in Kiev.

Influenced by her older brother, she began to write herself and debuted in print with poetry in the newspaper Komunistishe Fon (Communist Banner) in Kiev (1922). From that point, she published poetry, prose poems, and stories in: Komunistishe fon, Shtern (Star), the anthology Barg Aroyf (Uphill) (1922-1923), and the almanac Ukraine (Ukraine) (1926)—all in Kiev; Di Royte Velt (The Red World) and Sovetishe Literatur (Soviet Literature)—in Kharkov; Emes (Truth), Yungvald (Young Forest), Pyoner (Pioneer), and Eynikeyt (Unity)—in Moscow; among others.

was a member of the Association of Revolutionary Jewish Writers in Ukraine and signed its declaration (May 1927). Several of her poems, primarily from her first period as a writer, were included in Ezra Korman’s Yidishe Dikhterins (Jewish Women Poets) (Chicago: L. M. Shteyn, 1928).

During WWII she was in Central Asia. She was living near Kiev after WWII and writing for Eynikeyt.

She translated: N. S. Leskov, Di Khaye (The Animal) (Kiev: Kultur-Lige, 1929), 37 pp.; S. Vasil'chenko’s Avyatsye-Krayzl (The Flying Club) (Kharkov-Kiev: Ukrainian State Publishers for National Minorities, 1932), 58 pp.; Leonid Savel'ev, Di Nakht fun dem Ratn-Tsuzamenfor (The Night of the Soviet Conference) (Kharkov-Kiev: Ukrainian State Publishers for National Minorities, 1932), 70 pp.