Literary Showcase Participants

Alexander Ilichevsky

Poet and prose writer Alexander Ilichevsky’s first book, a poetry collection, was published in 1996, several years after he received his degree in physics and began a career as a scientist. Ilichevsky has also worked for Radio Liberty. Ilichevsky won the 2007 Russian Booker Prize for his novel Matisse, about a Moscow physicist who gives up a comfortable life to wander. He won second prize in the 2010 Big Book competition for The Persian, which draws on Ilichevsky’s childhood memories of Azerbaijan and was also shortlisted for the Yasnaya Polyana award.