• Academia Rossica
• Rossica Journal
• Our Partners
• Contact
• All Events & News
• E-news Sign Up
• Film
• Literature
  • Rossica Prize
  • Russian Literature Week
  • LBF 2008
  • New Russian Writing
  • Translation Grants
• Art
• Music
• E-Shop

Speakers

you are here: Literature > Russian Literature Week > Speakers

Svetlana Adjoubei Founding Director of Academia Rossica, editor of ROSSICA journal Academia Rossica is the organiser of Russian Language and Literature Week in Britain. The organisation seeks to present the best of Russian culture to the international audience in order to strengthen cultural and intellectual links between Russia and other countries. more...

Alexander Arkhangelsky Writer, journalist and TV presenter, Alexander Arkhangelsky is best known for authoring and presenting the Russian television programme ‘Tem vremenem’ (Meanwhile) on the ‘Culture’ channel. He has been honoured by several prizes for his work in the television and he himself frequently appears on radio and television talk-shows as a commentator on contemporary society and literature. He is also a well published author of a number of books, including his latest novel 1962, and articles on Russian literature, many of which have been translated into foreign languages. He served on the jury of the Russian Booker Prize and others. Alexander’s wide experience of academe, the media and journalism makes him a most valuable commentator on many aspects of contemporary Russia and culture. more...

Anthony Briggs Professor Tony Briggs, Senior Research Fellow at Bristol University, has written, translated or edited more than twenty books on Russian and English literature. After gaining a reputation as a leading authority on Alexander Pushkin, he has turned to Tolstoy in recent years, writing for Penguin Books. His translation of 'Resurrection' is in press, 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich, and Other Stories' has just been published, and his translation of 'War and Peace' (2005) has been widely acclaimed and described by an American critic as 'the best translation so far of Tolstoy's masterpiece into English. more...

Dmitry Bykov Born in 1967, Dmitry Bykov is a prolific, award-winning prose writer, whose works almost invariably give rise to heated debates in the literary press. He is also a widely published poet of some eight collections of poetry and he recently published an impressive, detailed new biography on Boris Pasternak, for which he was awarded the ‘Big Book' prize in 2007. Since the 1990s, Dmitry Bykov has produced a constant stream of newspaper articles, reviews and essays on a wide range of subjects from literature to politics. He has also hosted a weekly radio show and some television discussion programmes. Bykov goes out to court controversy and stimulate discussion, as can be seen in his recently published novel Zh.D., taken from two Russian letters of the alphabet: ‘It's going to be fiercely Russophobic and fiercely anti-Semitic,' he said just before the novel's publication. He went on, ‘It depicts both Russians and Jews as virus nations, which bring misfortune and decay to whatever they're trying to colonize. It's the best book I've ever written, it's actually the best book that can possibly be written today, and it's very, very funny.' Whatever else he might do, Dmitry Bykov is sure to cause a lively debate by his audacious originality! more...

Alexander Drozdov Alexander Drozdov has been Director of the First President of Russia Boris Yeltsin Foundation since its inception in November 2000. The foundation undertakes a broad range of educational, scientific, scholarly and cultural projects. It strives to promote cultural cooperation and an open exchange of ideas and information between Russia and the West. After establishing together with Academia Rossica the Rossica Translation Prize, the only prize for literary translation from Russian into English in the world, the foundation has subsequently establishes prizes for literary translation from Russia into French and Italian, with Spanish and German soon to follow. We are indeed privileged to benefit from the insights of such visionary people as Alexander Drozdov, who wish to promote a greater understanding of Russian culture in all its varied aspects. more...

Orlando Figes Orlando Figes is Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is a reputable writer of works on Russian history, most notably A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924 (1996), for which he was awarded the Wolfson Prize; Natasha's Dance (2002) and The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia (2007), all of which have been reviewed to international acclaim and translated into many foreign languages. He has appeared on many television and radio broadcasts, commenting on events in Russia and on Russian cultural and historical issues, and he is a regular book reviewer for the New York Review of Books. He is also a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. It is a great privilege to have Orlando as a speaker at Russian Literature Week. more...

Elaine Feinstein Poet, novelist, short-story writer, playwright, biographer and translator Elaine Feinstein worked variously as an editor for Cambridge University Press, as Lecturer in English at Bishop's Stortford Training College, and as a journalist. She contributes to many periodicals, including the Times Literary Supplement. Elaine Feinstein's first volume of poetry, In a Green Eye, was published in 1966. Her later work has been influenced by the poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva, a poet whose work she has translated from the Russian. She received a Cholmondeley Award in 1990. Her book, Anna of all the Russias: The Life of a Poet under Stalin (2005), is a biography of Anna Akhmatova. Elaine Feinstein is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and was elected on to the Council of the Royal Society of Literature in 2007. more...

Maria Galina Poet and novelist, Maria Galina was born in Tver; she spent her youth in Ukraine and majored in marine biology from Odessa University. She received her Ph.D. in biology and worked on environmental impact on salmon at the Bergen University in Norway. In Moscow since 1987, Galina abandoned science and took up literature as translator, poet and fantasy writer. She is a renowned literary critic. Since 1996 her science fiction novels, published. more...

Alexander Gavrilov Chief editor of “Book Review”, Moscow’s weekly newspaper about all that happens in the literary and publishing world and founder of the Moscow Book Festival. His activities, though, far surpass this niche; he is a real kulturträger who knows everyone and everything in the world of books. Gavrilov organized the annual Moscow Book Festival (by now there were two), the first event in Russia targeted at readers rather than at professionals; he hosts a talk show on books and frequently appears on TV; he actively participates in all Russian and many overseas book-related fairs, he masterminded several prizes such as the “Abzats” literary prize for the worst achievements in editorial work, translation, etc. (analogous to Hollywood’s “Goldern Raspberry”); finally, the downtown café and club “ArteFAQ”, which he co-owns, has become the hub for literary events and other performances. more...

Vladimir Grigoriev Vladimir Grigoriev is Councillor to Head of the Russian Federal Agency for the Press and Mass Communications and he is a tireless campaigner and champion of Russian literature and culture at all the world's major book fairs: he has famously said, ‘Russian literature should know no boundaries.' Born in 1958, Vladimir Grigoriev worked as an editor for the Novosti news agency from 1982 to 1990, after which he founded and headed the publishing house Vagrius. Vladimir Grigoriev has worked unflaggingly to promote and support the publication of Russian books and the protection of authorial rights during the difficult, transitional period from the old publishing protocol inherited from the former Soviet Union to the establishment of a new, market-oriented, internationally recognized modus operandi. He has been honoured with prizes in recognition of his work for services to Russian publishing and the dissemination of literature and culture not only in the Russian Federation (2001), but also in Poland (2005) and in France (2006). Grigoriev is also one of the founders of the prestigious book prize ‘Bolshaia kniga' (‘Big Book') - the second largest cash award, after the Nobel Prize. His unique insights into the increasingly buoyant and expanding market for Russian books makes him an extremely interesting and valuable speaker. more...

Vladimir Gusev Director of the State Russian Museum in St Petersburg since the perestroika years, cavalier of the French Legion d’Honneur award for the promotion of Russan-French cultural ties. Used to be the Chairman of St.Petersburg committee for culture under Anatoly Sobchak, at the time when other committees were headed by the future leaders of Russia, including Vladimir Putin. Ogranizer of numerous exhibitions of Russian art in Russia and overseas. Hosts a TV show about the museum. more...

Alexander Ilichevsky Alexander Ilichevsky was born in Sumgait, Azerbaijan in 1970 and graduated from a technological institute affiliated to Moscow University in theoretical physics. He worked in scientific research in Israel and California from 1991 to 1998, whereupon he returned to live in Moscow with his family. He is the prolific author of many literary works in various genres, both poetry and prose, all of which have been published in Russia’s most prestigious literary journals, such as Novyi mir (New World), Oktiabr (October) – all to great literary acclaim. His novel Matisse, dedicated to all those born in 1970, like the author himself, won him the Russian Booker Prize in 2007 – one of a record seventy-eight works submitted for consideration for the prize that year. This outstanding achievement is not only testament to Ilichevsky’s great talent as a writer, but also to the fact that Russian literature is alive and flourishing today, perhaps as never before. more...

Natalia Ivanova Prominent literary critic, the authorative biographer of Boris Pasternak, founder of Belkin Literary Prize, Deputy Editor in Chief of Znamya journal more...

Bridget Kendall Bridget Kendall, the much-admired BBC diplomatic correspondent, never fails to delight and impress audiences by the clarity of her delivery and the perceptiveness of her insights into many societies and cultures from around the world, and especially on Russia. She has spent several extended periods of study in Russia as a British Council Exchange Student at Voronezh State University in 1976-77 and again in 1981-82 at Moscow State University, while reading modern languages at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. She subsequently undertook postgraduate research in Soviet Studies at St Antony’s College Oxford and Harvard (USA). As a fluent Russian speaker who studied in the former USSR and was subsequently posted by the BBC as Moscow Correspondent from 1989 to 1994, she was uniquely placed to witness the momentous changes as the old Soviet Union collapsed and the new Russia emerged amidst the tumultuous social and political upheavals, often not fully understood by foreign commentators with less experience of the two, very different regimes. Bridget has made several documentaries for the BBC on Putin, Yeltsin and Gorbachev, and in 2006 she chaired and presented three one-hour debates on the future of Russia, held with Russian audiences in St Petersburg, Moscow and Siberia, and broadcast worldwide. more...

Dominic Lieven Professor of Russian Government at the London School of Economics, Lieven has written extensively on Russian history and post-Soviet politics, and on empire and European history. His most recent publications include Russia and the Origins of the First World War (Macmillan, 1983), Russia's Rulers under the Old Regime (Yale U.P., 1989), Nicholas II (John Murray/St Martin's Press, 1993), and Empire: The Russian Empire and its Rivals (John Murray/Yale U.P., 2000). more...

James Meek Award-winning novelist, short story writer and journalist James Meek was born in London in 1962 and grew up in Dundee. We Are Now Beginning Our Descent is his fourth novel. His previous book, The People's Act of Love (2005), won the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, the SAC Book of the Year Award, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and has been translated into more than twenty languages. He has published two collections of short stories, Last Orders and The Museum Of Doubt, and contributed to the acclaimed Rebel Inc anthologies The Children Of Albion Rovers and The Rovers Return. He has worked as a journalist since 1985, and his reporting from Iraq and about Guantanamo Bay won a number of British and international awards. In the autumn of 2001 he reported for the Guardian from Afghanistan on the war against the Taliban and the liberation of Kabul. James Meek's third novel, The People's Act of Love is set in a small town in Siberia in 1919, during the Russian civil war. The characters and drama, though, are far removed from the stock literary gallery of reds and whites. Amongst his drammatis personae are Christian castrates, cannibals and a division of the Czech army stranded behind in a war that should, by rights, have released them at this stage. more...

Christopher MacLehose Christopher MacLehose was Literary Editor of the Scotsman and subsequently Editorial Director at Chatto & Windus. After four years as Editor-in-Chief at William Collins, he became the Publisher at the Harvill Press, in which role he spent the next 22 years until after 7 years of independence the Press was bought by Random House. In that time Harvill became the leading translation house in Britain, publishing some of the outstanding contemporary European writers (Saramago, Sebald, Perec, Halldór Laxness, Magris, Enquist, Marías, Høeg; along with a list of crime writers in translation, among them Mankell, Arnaldur Indridason, Vargas); as also a list of American authors which included Ray Carver, Richard Ford and Peter Matthiessen. After leaving Harvill (now conjoined with Secker & Warburg into Harvill/Secker) in 2006, he established the MacLehose Press, which will begin publication later this year and is distributed by the new independent house Quercus. more...

Sergei Mironenko One of Russia’s leading historians of the 19th century, as well as being the Director of the State Archives of the Russian Federation, and he is the editor of Nicholas and Alexandra: Their Own Story – a historical biography of tsar Nicholas II’s family, murdered in July 1918. One of his principal concerns is to preserve and make available archives on the extensive gulag system and many other institutions of the former Soviet Union, and to assist the 6,000 researchers who annually visit the archives, in order to aid scholars to assess and reassess the past. He is editor of Anti-government Opposition During Khrushchev-Brezhnev Years (Yale University Press). His informal title is The Chief Keeper of Russian State Secrets. more...

Sergey Parkhomenko Editor-in-Chief of Inastranka Publishing House, Journalist, Commentator and Programs' Moderator at the Radio Station, Political Reporter and Columnist (1991-1993; 1993-1995), Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Magazines (1996-2001) and (2001-2003). more...

Natalia Perova Founding director of Glas Publishers, a small Russia-based publishing house specializing in publishing modern or less known Russian literature in English translations. Several of Glas’ publications received widespread critical acclaim and brought the works (such as Nina Lugovskaya’s diary) into the spotlight. more...

Irina Prokhorova Founder and chief editor of “New Literary Review”, which has transformed from being the cult literary magazine of the post-Soviet generation into a multifaceted cultural project including a major publishing house. Pioneered the publication of Russia-originated cultural studies with an academic slant and yet targeted at general audience. Organizer and participant of various literature-related events (conferences, presentations, etc.) at home and overseas. more...

Oliver Ready Award-winning translator and scholar of modern Russian literature, was a Queen's Scholar at Westminster School and read Russian and Italian at Oxford. After graduating in 1998, he lived in Poland and Russia, where he worked as an editor at the Moscow News and The Moscow Times . He has also written for the Times Litarary Supplement and the New Statesman. He recently completed his doctorate at Wolfson College, Oxford. He has translated The Zero Train and The Prussian Bride by Yuri Buida. Oliver Ready's translation of The Prussian Bride was awarded the inaugural Russian Translation Prize in 2005. more...

Lev Rubinstein Laureate of the prestigious Andrei Bely Prize (1 rouble and a bottle of vodka), Rubinstein is an accomplished poet with a sharp eye for unusual detail. His innovative use of “found poetry” and “poems on catalogue cards” were refreshing and unique in the surge of “new literature” after the fall of Communism. He is also a keen essayist; his recent book of collected essays, “Spirits of Time”, has earned well-deserved praise from critics and readers alike. more...

Olga Slavnikova The winner of Russian Booker Prize 2006. Director of “Debut” Prize. Grew up in Yekaterinburg in the Urals where she majored in journalism. A literary editor and critic, Slavnikova is the author of three widely acclaimed novels: A Dragon-fly the Size of a Dog, short-listed for the Russian Booker Prize (1997); Alone in the Mirror, short-listed for the Anti-Booker and winner of the Pavel Bazhov Prize; and Immortal, awarded the Critics' Academy Apollon Grigoriev Prize and short-listed for both the Belkin Prize and the National Bestseller Prize. more...

Norman Stone Professor of International Politics, Norman Stone has been described as ‘a legendary teacher’ when he was professor of modern history at Oxford University. Always controversial and never dull, his outspoken views on many aspects of European and Russian history are always thought-provoking and guaranteed to stimulate fierce debate. He is the prize-winning author of books on the First World War and Hitler. He was professor of modern history at Oxford from 1984 to 1995, from where he moved to take up the post of director of the Russian-Turkish Centre at Bilkent University, Ankara. For the last ten years he has divided his time between Oxford and Turkey, and he believes that living abroad there has given him a new perspective on Europe, and particularly on Russia, about which he has said, ‘When you realise that Tatar-Turkey dimension, you understand the thing an awful lot better.’ It is a privilege to have Professor Norman Stone as a guest at our Russian Language and Literature Week and audiences will not fail to be stimulated by his erudition and originality of thought. more...

Zinovy Zinik Zinovy Zinik is a Moscow-born novelist and broadcaster. He studied art and later geometrical topology at Moscow University. He emigrated in 1975 and worked as a theatre director for a student theatre group in Jerusalem. Since 1976 he has lived and worked in London. He regularly contributes to BBC Radio, the Times Literary Supplement and other periodicals. He is the editor and presenter of West End, a weekly radio show for the BBC Russian Service. Zinovy's nine books of fiction have been translated into a number of European languages. Of his recent books, Zinik's collection of short stories in English Mind the Doors was published in 2002 by Context Books, New York. A Russian version of his collection of stories and sketches At Home Abroad, written originally for the TLS, was published by Tri Kvadrata in Moscow, 2007. His novel The Mushroom Picker was made into a film for BBC Television in 1994. His novel Russian Service, as well as a number of his short stories, were adapted for BBC Radio 3 and for Radio France. During the 1990s three of his novels in Russian were nominated for the Russian Booker in Moscow. Zinik's dramatic farce Here Comes the Tiger, set to music by Gerard McBurney, was first performed by The Gogmagogs at the London City Festival in 1999. His radio documentary on Berlin After the Wall was awarded the Bronze Medal at the New York International Radio Festival in 2001. His dramatic radio monologue My Father's Leg was broadcast by BBC Radio 3 in 2003. Zinovy is a member of The Colony Room Club in Soho. more...

• Programme
• Speakers
• Partners
• Press