Grigoriev

Vladimir Grigoriev is Deputy 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.'

Danilkin

Lev Danilkin, columnist for the Russian magazine, Afisha, is one of Russia most engaging literary critics and independent thinkers. Danilkin graduated from Moscow State University with a B.A. and PhD in philology. He is the former editor of Russian Playboy and is the author of several books, including ‘The Parthian Arrow’ (2006), ‘Circular journeys round the intestines of a beggar’ (2007)

Slavnikova

Slavnikova began publishing fiction in the late 1980s (her first novel appeared in 1988), during which time she was also fiction editor, then managing editor, of the important literary magazine ‘Urals'. She has lived and worked in Moscow since 2001.

Galina

Maria Galina is one of the most interesting authors among those who made their names in the turbulent 1990s. She writes both literary and science fiction (with ten SF books to her credit). She is also a noted poet, a thoughtful critic, and translator of English and American science fiction, in all of which she excels. She is a winner of many important prizes for her prose and poetry and her critical essays.

Sharov

A historian of medieval Russia by training, Vladimir Sharov (b. 1952) is the son of a geneticist who turned to writing prose, for children and adults, in the 1960s. Sharov himself began writing fiction in the late 1970s, but it was not until the 1990s that his highly unusual historiosophical novels came before the public gaze.

Bykov

Dmitry Bykov was born in Moscow in 1967. He studied at Moscow State University's Faculty of Journalism, and journalism is something he remains engaged with: he regularly produces articles, essays and reviews for the leading Russian newspapers and magazines. He has senior editorial positions in various publications, hosts a weekly radio show and appears regularly on Russian TV.

Lukyanenko

Sergei Lukyanenko, born in Kazakhstan, is one of the foremost Russian science-fiction writers and has received tremendously high acclaim abroad. Originally studying as a psychiatrist, Lukyanenko turned to science-fiction writing with the monthly publication of Where the Mean Enemy Lurks in 1988. However, the works that shot him to the dizzying heights that he now occupies were Knights of the Forty Islands