Maria Stepanova, is a distinctive voice of Russia’s first post-Soviet literary generation. An award-winning poet and prose writer, essayist and journalist, Stepanova is the author of ten poetry collections and three books of essays. She has received several Russian and international literary awards, including the prestigious Andrey Bely Prize and Joseph Brodsky Fellowship. Her novel In Memory of Memory is a documentary novel that has been published in over 17 territories. It won the 2018 Bolshaya Kniga Award, an annual Russian literary prize presented for the best book of Russian prose, and the 2019 NOS Literature Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize.