Tomás Venclova (1937) is a Lithuanian poet, writer, translator and literary scholar. The son of Soviet politician Antanas Venclova, he studied at the University of Tartu. As a result of his opposition activities, he was forced to defect in 1977. Between 1977 and 1980 he taught at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he became a close friend of Czeław Miłosz, who at the time was Professor of Slavic languages and literatures. Since 1980 he has been a Professor of Slavic languages and literatures at Yale University. He has published prolifically, and has been translated into English, German, Italian, Russian, Polish, Hungarian and Chinese.