Writers

Maria Stepanova

Born: 1972

Quick Study: Maria Stepanova is a versatile writer of poetry and prose, including essays, who won particularly broad acclaim for her novel In Memory of Memory.

The Stepanova File: Maria Stepanova published some of her first work in the “thick” literary journal Znamya in the 1990s, establishing a literary name for herself and going on to receive, over the years, notice for a broad range of writings and cultural projects. She was one of the co-authors of the idea for a 2000 “St. Matthew Passion” musical project that featured work by contemporary composers and poets as well as motifs from Johann Sebastian Bach. Her In Memory of Memory, a meditative novel about history, family, and, yes, memory, won Big Book, Yasnaya Polyana, and NOSE prizes during the 2018-2019 award season.

Psssst………: Stepanova was head editor on the Openspace.ru site (now defunct) for many years and is now head editor on the Colta.ru site, which reworks the Openspace site; both resources have served as important respositories of Russian-language information about literature and culture…

Stepanova’s Places: Born in Moscow… Berlin, where she is a guest professor…

Stepanova on Stepanova & Writing: During a discussion of memory and writing with Sergei Lebedev on Radio Liberty, moderated by Elena Fanailova, Stepanova said this when asked what she’d learned while researching her family history, “Basically, when you start writing, start thinking about the dead, you start making attempts to cultivate something from those several documents – threads and buds – and there’s one very serious temptation it’s almost impossible not to fall for. I’m not sure I didn’t fall for it. It’s a writerly temptation or, more likely, an inheritor’s permissiveness, that this is all mine, this is my material, they’ve all died, and only I can look after them; I have such noble goals and the best of intentions, therefore I have the right, as it’s called in the Bible, to uncover the nakedness of your father, to show their faces, quote their letters, make them visible without caring if they would have wanted that or not. That’s a very important topic for me and I think a lot about how the dead are people, just as you and I are, meaning they have their rights that must be honored and respected.”

The Word on Stepanova: Writing for Meduza, reviewer Galina Yuzefovich called In Memory of Memory “the best Russian prose of the year [2017] (and, perhaps not just this year),” saying the book came about thanks to “that natural desire that’s carried through all of life: to rescue and save, to tell about one’s kin who appear unremarkable against the backdrop of large[r] history.”

Stepanova on Stepanova & Writing: During a discussion of memory and writing with Sergei Lebedev on Radio Liberty, moderated by Elena Fanailova, Stepanova said this when asked what she’d learned while researching her family history, “Basically, when you start writing, start thinking about the dead, you start making attempts to cultivate something from those several documents – threads and buds – and there’s one very serious temptation it’s almost impossible not to fall for. I’m not sure I didn’t fall for it. It’s a writerly temptation or, more likely, an inheritor’s permissiveness, that this is all mine, this is my material, they’ve all died, and only I can look after them; I have such noble goals and the best of intentions, therefore I have the right, as it’s called in the Bible, to uncover my father’s nakedness, to show their faces, quote their letters, make them visible without caring if they would have wanted that or not. That’s a very important topic for me and I think a lot about how the dead are people, just as you and I are, meaning they have their rights which must be honored and respected.”

Stepanova Recommends: Wonderzine’s detailed piece listing Stepanova’s favorite books include such volumes as Sebald’s Austerlitz; correspondence between Pasternak and Tsvetaeva; Patricia Highsmith’s A Game for the Living; book illustrator Alisa Poret’s volume of notes, drawings, and reminiscences; Mikhail Kuzmin’s poetry collection The Guide; and Marianne Hirsch’s The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust.

 

 

 

Photo: Andrei Natotsinsky

Sergei Samsonov

Born: 1980

Quick Study: Sergei Samsonov made a name for himself by writing novels portraying psychological drama and social issues in contemporary Russia but he’s broadened his temporal horizons by writing books set against the backdrop of historical events including World War 2 and the Civil War.

The Samsonov File: Sergei Samsonov’s writerly career advanced pretty quickly: he followed his 2007 debut novel, Legs, about a soccer player, with The Kamlaev Anomaly, a book about a composer that brought him wide recognition when it made the National Bestseller Award shortlist in 2009. Those two books, as well as his Oxygen Limit, which takes place after a terrorist act in Moscow, and Hold on to the Earth, which depicts coal miners and geopolitical conflict in the Donbass region and won the 2019 Yasnaya Polyana Award, focus on contemporary events. Samsonov has also proven himself with historical settings. His The Falcon’s Line is a long novel about World War 2 air battles; the book won Samsonov a Debut Prize in 2015 (in manuscript form, under the alias Gorshkovozov) and went on to become a Big Book Award finalist two years later. High Blood, another large (640 pages) novel, is set in the Don steppes in 1920, during the Civil War, and features characters from both sides.

Samsonov’s Places: Podolsk, the city in the Moscow region where he was born… Moscow, where he graduated from the Literary Institute…

The Word on Samsonov: Yasnaya Polyana Award jury member Vladislav Otroshenko said this when Hold Onto the Earth won the award in 2019: “This book elicits highly varied, sometimes contradictory, opinions. There are many truths in our time but the primary truth in this book is artistic truth. We, the jury, think everyone should read it.”

Samsonov on Samsonov & Writing: When asked in an interview, by Egor Appolonov, how he writes, Samsonov responded, “I sit down and I write. Four, six, eight, ten hours a day…” He mentioned factors that might account for the variations – from intensity to the atmospheric pressure in the Moscow region – and added that he has no set schedule and does take breaks.

Samsonov Recommends: After Samsonov mentioned, in an interview, that Ivan Bunin and Andrei Platonov are writers to learn from, interviewer Egor Appolonov asked for “Samsonov’s list” of other writers “without whom your language wouldn’t have become [what it is],” prompting Samsonov to say there are too many to name and the list grows. He did, however name a few: “Nabokov definitely. Bitov definitely. The Iliad in Gnedich’s translation is absolutely a cornerstone for me, just like the clicking of wheels on the railroad as a child. Well and Russian classics, at least that half I’ve managed to get to know fairly closely.” In another interview, with Klarisa Pul’son, Samsonov said Homer’s Iliad and Rafael Sabatini’s Captain Blood: His Odyssey are his two most “significant” books.

 

Photo: Alexei Kiselev

Evgenia Nekrasova

Born: 1985

Quick Study: Evgenia Nekrasova’s short stories, novellas, and novel, Kalechina-Malechina jolt the reader with a unique combination of humor, harsh realities, and tenderness worked into plot elements ranging from domestic violence to an everchanging epidemic to a cantankerous kitchen spirit. Nekrasova masterfully tosses in elements like folkore, magic, and verse for good measure.

The Nekrasova File: Evgenia Nekrasova began writing fiction and screenplays in the early 2010s, publishing her work in “thick” literary journals. Her breakthrough to broader recognition came when a collection of her stories, Unhappy Moscow – the title story features a character living through a strange epidemic in Moscow – won second prize in the 2017 Litsei competition for young writers. Her first novel, Kalechina-Malechina, was published the next year by Elena Shubina’s imprint at AST: this novel about a latchkey schoolgirl, Katya, involves a classroom where Katya faces bullying, a mean teacher, a bit of exhibitionism, and an inane knitting assignment, though Katya’s life changes significantly after she befriends a kitchen spirit that shows up in her apartment. Kalechina-Malechina was shortlisted for the National Bestseller, Big Book, and NOSE awards during the 2019 award season. Nekrasova’s story collection Sistermom followed in 2019.

Psssst………: Nekrasova has worked as a copywriter in Moscow ad agencies… she graduated from the Moscow School of New Cinema, where she studied screenwriting; she has taught screenwriting to student directors at her alma mater…

The Word on Nekrasova: In a piece for Sobesednik about important books from July 2018, writer Dmitry Bykov praised Nekrasova and her Kalechina-Malechina, calling Nekrasova “a very big writer” and Andrei Platonov’s “direct descendent,” thanks to a “Platonovesque melancholy that fills the world” in Kalechina-Malechina. He concluded his brief review of the novel by writing, “in short, remember this name and expect a lot.”

Nekrasova on Nekrasova and Writing: In an interview with Yulia Lysova on Mnogobukv, Nekrasova said it’s not possible to teach someone to write, but “you can teach [someone] how to listen to themself. The main task is to help the person understand what’s important for them to write about. Then the text will work.” In a discussion with writer Olia Breininger about literature and writing, partially transcribed on Afisha, Nekrasova said, “I don’t write autofiction but I really do use a lot of personal feelings and scenes. All of Kalechina-Malechina grew out of a scene on a roof, where a girl was sitting and swinging her feet – I saw her when I was the same age as my main character Katya. And the scene with getting stuck in an elevator happened to me: I experienced that same feelings of complete fear and loneliness of a child locked in a metal box. Those feelings helped me a lot in writing that text.”

Nekrasova’s Places: Kapustin Yar (in the Astrakhan Oblast), where she was born, then the Moscow region, where she grew up… Manchester, Liverpool, London, and Athens, places where she lived during 2008-2012…

Nekrasova Recommends: Toni Morrison, to whom she wrote a letter the day before Morrison died. Andrei Platonov, whose Happy Moscow she says has a "feminist message." Nekrasova has also said that Alexei Remizov is an important writer for her: the title Kalechina-Malechina comes from a song that he wrote and she has said “his work never gets old. He uses folklore, an important part of language and culture.”

Alexei Makushinsky

Born: 1970

Quick Study: Alexei Makushinsky’s meditative, digressive writings combine distinctly Russian themes and figures with stylistics and rhythms that have earned him comparisons to such authors as Proust, Mann, and Nabokov.

The Makushinsky File: Alexei Makushinsky is a writer of diverse texts – poetry, essays, translations, and novels – who published his first novel, Max, in 1998 and began winning broad recognition in the 2010s after Steamship to Argentina, a novel about emigration, twentieth-century history, and time, won the Russkaya Premiya and hit the Big Book Award shortlist, winning third place in Big Book’s reader’s choice competition. He returned to the Big Book finalist circle in 2020 with The Outskirts of Thought. A Philosophical Stroll, a book that visits places where Nikolai Berdyaev and Jacques Maritain (among others) lived in Paris. Among his other novels is World Brought to a Standstill (2018), which features an insomniac narrator who sits in poses for Zen Buddhist meditation while his memory works; Makushinsky has also written two poetry collections a one book of essays.

Makushinsky’s Places: Moscow, where he was born and graduated from the Gorky Literary Institute… German, where he has lived since 1992 and now teaches Russian literature and culture at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz…

Psssst………: Makushinsky began writing poetry at the age of fifteen…

The Word on Makushinsky: Anna Berseneva begins her review of Makushinsky’s Outskirts of Thought for Novye Izvestia by noting her reaction to his previous book, World Brought to a Standstill: “There are some texts where you can’t explain your passion for them in a logical way. That’s what I thought as I read Alexei Makushinsky’s previous book World Brought to a Standstill. Both its plot and the main character’s consciousness are connected with Buddhism, something I perceive very much as an outsider. That novel, however, so hypnotized me when I was reading that it I couldn’t surface from its strange, nervous nirvana for a long time.” Berseneva goes on to write that she began reading Outskirts of Thought with a similar feeling of hypnosis, later notes that Makushinsky follows the “spiritual route of his characters,” and concludes by saying the reader doesn’t want to stop the philosophical stroll and calls the book “an important intellectual event for our literature.”

Makushinsky on Makushinsky & Writing: In an interview for Lenta.ru with Igor Igritsky, when asked about living in Germany but writing in Russian, Makushinsky answers, “I write in Russian because I know how the language is constructed. I know how the machine is assembled and taken apart. I see the pieces from within. I’ll never be able to write in another language with the feeling of control that I have with Russian. I know German very well but it’s a foreign language to me even so.”

Makushinsky Recommends: When Makushinsky’s publisher, Eksmo, interviews him for their site, the interviewer notes that Makushinsky is sometimes compared to Vladimir Nabokov, to which Makushinsky comments, “I regard Nabokov wonderfully, adore him, and am sometimes horribly envious of him.” In the Lenta interview, when asked about “literary authorities,” Makushinsky agrees that Thomas Mann and Marcel Proust fit that category for him.

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