Ludmila Ulitskaya is one of Russia’s most popular and renowned literary figures. A former scientist and the director of Moscow’s Hebrew Repertory Theater, she is the author of more than a dozen works of fiction, including The Big Green Tent; several tales for children; and multiple plays that have been staged by a number of theaters in Russia and Germany. She has won Russia’s Man Booker Prize and twice won its Big Book Prize, as well as being nominated for the Man Booker International Prize.
Polly Gannon is the director of cultural studies at the New York-St. Petersburg Institute of Linguistics, Cognition and Culture. She holds a Ph.D. in Russian literature from Cornell University. She lives, teaches, and translates in St. Petersburg, Russia.