The judges of the Rossica Young Translators Prize 2011 have announced a shortlist of 5 entries to go forward for the prize of £500.

In celebration of Yuri Gagrin’s momentous flight into space 50 years ago next week, we are running a competition that is out of this world!

Jonathan Derbyshire reports from Moscow on Russia's literary scene
I meet Andrei Scoch in the cafe of a smart Moscow hotel, ten minutes' walk from the Kremlin and Red Square. A fit-looking mann of 45 with startlingly blue eyes, Skoch is a member of the Duma, the lower house of the Russian Parliament, where he sits with Vladimir Putin's United Russia bloc.

It’s time to launch the third week of our competition! Same rules, just update your favorite Russian novel for the 21st Century in 25 words or less.

BOOKS FROM RUSSIA Catalogue download

Видеоподкасты мероприятий Лондонской книжной ярмарки 2010

The first Russian stand at BookExpo America New York, 25 - 27 May 2010 This year the BOOKS FROM RUSSIA stand took part in BookExpo America, the main fair in the American book industry. The stand was organised by the Russian Federal agency for Press and Mass Communications and represented a range of Russian publishers. BookExpo America is currently undergoing major changes, transforming itself from a fair which focused primarily on the domestic market into an international book forum.

by Konstantin Milchin

The forthcoming London Book Fair will provide a special focus on the most talked-about talent in contemporary Russian literature. Russian literature has started to regain the spring in its step in the 21st century. The most interesting works on offer today will be presented at the London Book Fair – Russia Market Focus 2011, which will take place from April 11-13 at Earls Court.

Video poetry is a new phenomena in the contemporary Russian arts scene. In today’s world, media has no limits - information is mixed together with a myriad of fast, dynamic images, and punchy sounds. Video poetry has incorporated these elements that are all around us and used them to create a new art form which has become extremely popular in Russia during the last couple of years. Leading experimental poets and film directors, including Kirill Serebrennikov and Valeria Gai Germanika, amongst others, have come together to create films based on poems read by the poets themselves. The performances are also strongly influenced by European artists of the 70s and 80s, such as Gianni Toti, Richard Kostelanetz, Arnaldo Antunes and Caterina Davinio, whose experimental work was considered arthouse and cutting edge thirty years ago, but seems to strike a chord with the world we live in today. In our culture of multi-media, the merging of poetry, music and film feels only natural. ACADEMIA ROSSICA will be premiering three programmes of video poetry at SLOVO literature festival. The three programmes will offer a unique opportunity to see the works of fifteen of the most important names in Russian video poetry, including Andrei Rodionov, Inna Kabysh and Alina Butokhnovskaya. Programme 1 & 3 will be screened at the Apollo Cinema, Piccadilly at 18.30 on 20 & 22 April. To book tickets, call 0871 220 6000 or go to www.apollocinemas.com Programme 2 includes readings from cutting edge contemporary Russian and British poets and takes place at Calvert 22 art gallery at 18.30. Attendance is by invitation only. These events are part of the SLOVO festival and organised in collaboration with Tom Chivers and Penned in the Margins. These programmes are curated by Andrei Rodionov, one of the leading contemporary Russian poets and Ekaterina Troepolskaya, who also curates the Piataya Noga video poetry festival.

Translate an extract from a book by contemporary authors Evgeny Vodolazkin, Lev Danilkin or Anna Starobinets by 25 March. The winner will receive a cheque for £500. Open to all under 25s.

Rossica Young Translators Award was established in 2009 to support young people who are passionate about the world of translation and to encourage literary translation amongst those who study and speak Russian. With the help of this award we would like to nurture a new generation of Russian to English translators, as well as encourage cultural dialogue. What is more, this award casts a spotlight on the newest developments in Russian literature by selecting extracts for translation from the latest releases by acclaimed contemporary authors.

Pelevin’s Helmet of Horror updates the story of Theseus and the Minotaur to the world of Internet chatrooms. You can win a copy of Pelevin’s amazing modern myth by updating your own legend or fairy tale.

Daniel Stein, Interpreter Ludmila Ulitskaya. Overlook Press (currently being printed) Ludmila Ulitskaya (born 1943) works in an area that could be defined as intellectual female prose. Ulitskaya has received an impressive array of various awards, the most recent of which is the French Simone de Beauvoir Prize (2011). A true story, it follows the escapades of a Polish Jew, who by a sheer miracle managed to not only survive the Second World War but also to save hundreds of people from Nazi concentration camps. Based on the life of translator, hero, monk and ecumenist Oswald Rufeisen (1922–1998), the novel was both praised and disparaged in Russia, yet won Ulitskaya the Big Book award.

It's 2033; 20 years have passed since nuclear war destroyed the world and the pitiful remnants of Moscow's population is struggling to survive in Metro stations and tunnels where they have established a primitive economy, raising pigs and growing tea. Meanwhile, they have also created over a dozen mini-states, some on the outskirts that suffer from mutant invasions, and from where one inhabitant goes on a journey in search of help. Dmitry Glukhovsky was born in Moscow in 1979 and has lived in Israel, Germany and France. It took him eight years to write Metro 2033, which may partly explain his book’s popularity: it is not merely postapocalyptic science fiction, but a true coming-of-age novel.

He-Lover of Death Boris Akunin. W&N Moscow, the early 20th century. Senka the thief falls for a mysterious beauty nicknamed Death, whose previous lovers all died in suspicious circumstances. Senka witnesses horrific events but is saved by Erast Fandorin, a detective who is Russia’s answer to Sherlock Holmes. Boris Akunin is the pen name of the philologist and Japanese- Russian translator Grigory Chkhartishvili (born 1956), whose postmodernist detective novels have become bestsellers and movies. His works are set in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a period well known to aficionados of Russian literature as the heyday of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy. Akunin marshals his material with great elegance, and his novels are studded with hidden pearls from classical literature.

Now is the time to get to grips with contemporary Russian literature with 10 new Russian novels translated into English.

16 April – 7 May 2011
The RSC announces Rona Munro's "Little Eagles" at Hampstead Theatre.
A story about the battle for military supremacy during the Cold War, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s first orbit around the earth.

29 March - 23 April, Finborough Theatre
Based on the 1927 black and white Russian film by Abram Room, Bed and Sofa is a musical written by Polly Pen and Laurence Klavan.

Elena Chizhova, a former economist, teacher and entrepreneur, finally turned to writing in 1996 after being rescued from a burning cruise ship. Since that time she has been consumed by the need to write, and has enjoyed considerable success as a result. Chizhova’s prose shuns trickery in favour of emotional honesty in order to probe the weeping sores of Russian history that contemporary culture would sooner forget.

Born in 1947 in Moscow, Leonid Yuzefovich spent his youth in the Urals, graduating from the History Faculty of Perm University. He then became an officer in the Soviet Army, serving in Buryatia and Mongolia. Since 1984 he has lived in Moscow. With a PhD in history, Yuzefovich worked for many years as a school history teacher and did not start writing in earnest until late in life.

Mikhail Weller was born in 1948. He graduated with a degree in philology from Leningrad University in 1972. After university he worked in many different areas, including working as a logger in the taiga, a hunter, a shepherd, a teacher and a journalist. In recent years he has delivered lectures on modern Russian literature at the universities of Milan, Jerusalem and Copenhagen.

Andrey Usachev was born in 1958 in Moscow. He attended the Moscow Institute of Electronics but left to study humanities at Tver State University. His first published work appeared in 1985, and from 1988 he has been a full-time author, mainly of work for children. Usachev has been extremely prolific, having had 150 books published in Russia.

Ludmila Ulitskaya was born in 1943 in the Urals and graduated from Moscow University with a Degree of Master in Biology. She worked in the Institute of Genetics as a scientist. Shortly before Perestroika she became Repertory Director of the Hebrew Theatre of Moscow and began writing scripts. Ulitskaya can be defined as one of the most far-reaching contemporary Russian writers with over two million books sold worldwide.

A historian of medieval Russia by training, Vladimir Sharov , born 1952, began writing fiction in the late 1970s, echoing his father's own move from genetics to writing in the 1960s. Nevertheless, it was not until the 1990s that Sharov's highly unusual historical-philosophical novels came to the attention of the public. When they did, they caused genuine acrimony and controversy among the editors of influential literary journals, especially Novyi Mir.

Anna Starobinets is one of a handful of Russian authors who writes in the genre of 'intellectual fantasy'. She was born in Moscow in 1978 and graduated in philology at Moscow State University. As a student she worked part time in several different fields, from simultaneous translation and private tutoring, to billposting and waitressing. After her finishing her degree she started work in journalism.

Olga Slavnikova graduated from the Faculty of Journalism at Ekaterinburg State University in 1981 and began publishing fiction in the late 1980s during which time she was also fiction editor, then managing editor, of the literary magazine Ural. Slavnikova has lived and worked in Moscow since 2001.

Dmitry Kuzmin, born in 1968, graduated from Moscow State University for Pedagogics and taught literature, working as an assistant professor of foreign literature and literary translation. In 1989 Kuzmin founded the Vavilon Union of Young Poets, the organisational hub for Moscow’s experimental poetry scene. In 1996 he started the Vavilon Internet project, an online anthology of current Russian writing. Since 1993 he has been the head of ARGO-RISK Publishers producing about 20 new poetry titles annually.

Sergei Kostin is a spy novelist, expert in the history of espionage, and documentary film maker. Graduating from the Moscow State Institute of Foreign Languages, Kostin refused an offer to collaborate with Soviet intelligence, preferring to work as a translator in Algeria. He returned to the theme of espionage during the Nineties, after being graduated from Cinema College (VGIK) as scriptwriter and while working for Russian and French TV Channels.

Sergei Ivanov is not only one of Russia’s most distinguished historians of Byzantium, but also a leading popular historian and columnist. Since receiving his PhD from Moscow State University in 1984, he has produced over 170 scholarly publications, including Holy Fools in Byzantium and Beyond, which was published in English translation by the Oxford University Press in 2006, and Byzantine Missions, which is currently being translated into English and Czech.

Alexander Ilichevsky was born in Sumgait, Azerbaijan in 1970 and graduated in theoretical physics from a technological institute affiliated to Moscow University. He is the 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 Novy mir (New World), Oktiabr (October) – and all to great literary acclaim.

Mikhail Elizarov was born in 1973 in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine. He graduated from Kharkov State University, with a degree in philology. Simultaneously with his studies, he studied vocal at Higher Musical School. Until 1999 he was a student at the Kharkov Arts Academy, studying film directing. He continued his film studies in Berlin, Germany.

Polina Dashkova is Russia’s most successful crime author, with a total of 40 million copies of her books sold so far; in Germany alone, where she is known as the 'Queen of Russian Crime Fiction', she has sold more than 300,000 copies. A graduate of Moscow’s Maxim Gorky Literary Institute, Dashkova has been an active radio and print journalist, and has worked as an interpreter and literary translator from English. She currently lives with her husband and daughter in Moscow.

Marina Boroditskaya is a Russian poet and translator. She graduated in 1976 from the Moscow State Institute of Foreign Languages, and is well known for translating English, American and French classical poetry. She has published numerous books of children’s poetry in Russia, and translated many English-language children’s writers, including A. A. Milne, Eleanor Farjeon and Hilaire Belloc.

Pavel Basinsky was born in 1961 in Frolovo, near Volgograd. He studied at Saratov University and at the Maxim Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow. A prolific journalist and author, Basinsky has excelled at a number of genres, from scholarly monographs to experimental novels. Basinsky holds a PhD in Comparative Literature, has sat on the jury of several major Russian literary prizes, such as the Russian Booker, the Alexander Solzhenitsyn Prize and the Yasnaya Polyana Prize, and is the Cultural Editor of Rossiiskaia Gazeta.

The BOOKS FROM RUSSIA stand was held at the London Book Fair for the third time by the Russian Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communication in collaboration with Academia Rossica. Building on the success of last year, publishers were offered even greater opportunities for creating and expanding business links with the fast growing Russian book market. This was of particular important this year as part of the lead up to the 2011 London Book Fair, where Russia will be the Guest of Honour. Despite being affected by the unexpected volcanic activity, as was the entire London Book Fair, we were very pleased to see that the BOOKS FROM RUSSIA stand was one of the liveliest at the fair.

ACADEMIA ROSSICA's aim is to bring writers, publishers and translators together and to help create structures to support the publication and distribution of Russian literature in the English speaking world. The Translators Day will be a key element of this project, which will set the ground for a stronger recognition and promotion of literary translation from Russian into English. 10.30 – 11.30 PEN Café, EC2 Rossica Translation Prize, Young Translators Prize award. A special Rossica Translation award to Stanley Mitchell 11.30 –12.00 BFR, Y455 Russkiy Mir Translation Grants Presentation 12.00 – 13.00 BFR, Y455 Roundtable: Translating Russia 13.30 –14.30 BFR, Y455 Presentation: Famous Englishmen, Known Only in Russia Presentation: Misreading English Literature – A few true stories from Soviet translations 15.00 – 15.30 BFR, Y455 New Millennium Prize Award. Winner - Mary Hobson, poet and translator. 16.00 – 16.30 PEN Café, EC2 Market Focus Handover Ceremony, Champagne Reception Interpreting for the Russian guests at the LBF and SLOVO festival For those interested in offering their professional translation skills during the London Book Fair, ACADEMIA ROSSICA will have a series of events and seminars where interpreters will be needed in order for Russian and UK guests to communicate with each other. This an excellent opportunity for professional translators to play an involved and encouraging role in the development of future publishing projects that will lead to the further promotion and distribution of Russian literature in the English speaking world. To register as an interpreter, please contact Rodrigo@academia-rossica.org by 15th April.