Mikhail Shishkin

The author of widely acclaimed novels, Shishkin is admired as a refined stylist whose fiction engages Russian and European literary traditions and forges an equally expansive vision for the future of literature. Born January 18, 1961 in Moscow, Shishkin worked as a school teacher and journalist. His writing debut in 1993, the short story Calligraphy Lesson, was named Best Debut of the Year by the literary journal Znamya.

Diana Arbenina

Diana Arbenina is a poet and rock musician and founder of the band the Night Snipers. In the words of Dmitri Bykov, “Arbenina is a well-read, subtle and unusually cultured poet. It is all the more interesting, then, to hear about the poems she grew up with, her favourite prose (which is rather exotic), and to listen to her read both her own poetry and that of others.”

Mikhail Epstein

The philologist and philosopher, Mikhail Epstein, is Professor of Russian and Cultural Theory at Durham University, where he is also the founder and Director of the Centre for Humanities Innovation. In his book, Sola Amore: Love in Five Dimensions, Epstein discusses the nature of love as imagination, eros, tenderness and pain, examining not only the physical but also the psychological, cultural, linguistic, and religious dimensions of love and eros.

Sasha Filipenko

Sasha Filipenko was born in Minsk in 1984, going on to study in Saint Petersburg and New York. He is well known as a Russian GQ columnist, and as a presenter on TVRain. His powerful debut novel, A Son No More (Бывший сын 2014), gently yet profoundly explores themes of love, loss, faith, and redemption.

Lydia Grigorieva

Lydia Grigorieva is a Ukrainian poet who now lives in London. Her work has been widely translated and she has worked with the BBC World Service, Russian radio and television and the British Library. Exploring themes of love and nostalgia, and what it means to construct your own reality in a foreign land, Grigorieva’s poetry “leaves us with an emotional aftertaste, a feeling of wholeness and hope”.

Dina Korzun

Born in Smolensk, Dina Korzun is a Russian actress who made her screen debut with a critically acclaimed performance in Valery Todorovsky's Country of the Deaf (1998). For her portrayal of Tanya in Last Resort (2000), she won international praise with awards at the British Independent Film Awards, the London Film Festival, and the Bratislava International Film Festival, among others.

Katya Zemtsova

Katya Zemtsova is the founder and Director of Elephant Production Management, where she has worked for the past five years.

Alexander Terekhov

The Guardian has compared Alexander Terekhov’s fine satire to that of Saltykov-Shchedrin and the individuality of his language to that of Platonov. His novel, The Stone Bridge (2009), explores the idea of historical truth, questioning whether it is ever possible to recapture the reality of the past. His latest novel, Germans, is a sharply satirical exploration of today’s Russia, told through the eyes of a scepitcal, ironical press officer whose reality begins to crumble.

Olga Sedakova

An intensely philosophical and religious poet, Olga Sedakova stands in stark contrast to the rampant commercialization of contemporary Russian reality, instead tracing her poetic roots back to the early avant-garde movements of pre-revolutionary Russia. Despite enduring years of censorship under the Soviet regime, Sedakova's poetry has been praised around the world for its extraordinary power, winning, among many others, the Dante Aligheiri Prize, the Alexandr Solzhenitsyn Prize, and the Durres International Festival of Poetry Prize.

Zakhar Prilepin

Considered one of the founders of the "Chechen" genre in Russian literature, Prilepin has been praised for the honesty and poignant, semi-autobiographical nature of his prose, winning him international acclaim. His second novel Sankya - exploring the trauma of shifting realities during the collapse of Communism - was awarded the "Yasnaya Polyana". As an author, he fearlessly explores different means of expression, from the novel-in-stories Sin - named best book of the decade - to his ground-breaking and critically acclaimed Black Monkey.

Alla Bashenko

Alla Bashenko is a poet and children's author whose works are inspired by the desire for happiness and the search for a better world within oneself. Alla’s first published works have inspired a number of collaborations in music and theatre, and she has also worked with the charity Gift of Life.

Rowan Williams

Former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams is Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and is acknowledged internationally as an outstanding theological writer, scholar and teacher. He has been involved in many theological, ecumenical and educational commissions, and has written extensively across a very wide range of related fields of professional study.

Valentina Polukhina

Valentina Polukhina is the author and editor of major studies of Brodsky, as well as publications on poets such as Akhmatova, Pasternak, Tsvetaeva, Khlebnikov and Mandelshtam. She has a particular interest in bringing living Russian literature to English audiences, organising the visits of many Russian writers and poets to Keele and other English universities. The post of Russian Poet in Residence at the University of Keele, as well as the Russian Poets' Fund, were established thanks to her efforts.

Elaine Feinstein

Elaine Feinstein is a poet, novelist, short-story writer, playwright, biographer and translator. Her poetry has been influenced by the Black Mountain poets, as well as the Objectivists, and she has been awarded the Betty Miller Prize, the Society of Authors Travel Award, and the Arts Council Award.

Fiona Sampson

Fiona Sampson is an award-winning British poet, who has also published work on the philosophy of language and the writing process. Her poetry has been published and broadcast in more than thirty languages, and she was the founder-director of Poetryfest, the Aberystwyth International Poetry Festival.

Sergei Shargunov

A prodigious talent, Sergei Shargunov published his first collection of stories at the age of 19. His writing is heavily informed by contemporary Russian politics and his own experiences working as a journalist and in the political sphere. His novel, Book Without Photographs (2011, published in English in March 2014), is a semi-autobiographical account which has been praised for transcending its personal context, becoming symbolic for a whole generation of young people searching for their place in the world.

Oliver Ready

Oliver Ready is Research Fellow and Director of the Russkiy Mir Programme at St Antony’s College, Oxford, and Consultant Editor for Russia and East-Central Europe at the Times Literary Supplement. His translations include Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (Penguin, 2014), Before and During by Vladimir Sharov (Dedalus, 2014), and The Prussian Bride by Yuri Buida (Dedalus, 2002; Rossica Translation Prize, 2005). Dr Ready is writing a book on folly and wisdom in Russian prose of the past fifty years.

Catherine MacDougall

Catherine MacDougall is an expert in Russian art and Co-director and founder of the internationally-recognised MacDougall’s Auction House. Her debut novel, Brig Mercury, explores the dark side of art, using her in-depth, personal experience of the international art world to create a unique detective tale which combines the classic elements of thriller while addressing deeper questions about the individual’s search for self.

Victor Ginzburg

Victor Ginzburg is a Russian-American director, producer and screenwriter. His filmmaking career started at the School of Visual Arts in New York, with "Hurricane David", an impressionistic documentary about the victims of cerebral palsy expressing themselves through art therapy. He is best known, however, for his critically acclaimed adaptation of Pelevin's Generation P (2011).

Roman Liberov

Roman Liberov is a documentary filmmaker and animator. He trained at the BBC specializing in documentary filmmaking, where he then worked for six years. Ilfandpetrov forms part of a cycle of animated documentaries about Russian writers, including Yuri Olesha, Joseph Brodsky, Georgi Vladimov, and Sergei Dovlatov.