Zion Square (Ben Yehuda Press, 2025) is a new poetry collection from Boston College Professor of Russian, English, and Jewish Studies Maxim D. Shrayer. It is a book of war, love, despair, and mourning. Shrayer says he worked on the poems while violence and conflict raged in Ukraine and Israel, places of deep meaning for the writer. The collection took its final shape after Shrayer’s trip to Israel, where he lectured, gave readings, and saw family and friends. He calls Zion Square “a meditation on writing about wars while living between languages and cultures.” Shrayer, a bilingual writer and translator, has published more than 25 books, including Waiting for America: A Story of Emigration; Leaving Russia: A Jewish Story; Immigrant Baggage; and Kinship.