Tatyana Tolstaya

Tatyana Tolstaya (also spelled Tatiana Tolstaya, in Russian: Татья́на Ники́тична Толста́я born 3 May, 1951 in Leningrad) is a Russian writer, TV host, publicist, novelist, and essayist.

Life and work

She was born into a family of rich literary tradition. Her paternal grandfather was Aleksei Nikolaevich Tolstoi, an important Russian-Soviet writer known as 'the Red Count', author of "Peter I" (Петр Первый) and other novels. His wife Natalia Krandievskaya Tolstaya was an influential poet. The grandfather on the maternal side was a literary translator, Mikhail Lozinsky. Tatyana Tolstaya's sister Natalia Tolstaya is a writer as well. Her son, Artemy Lebedev, is the founder and owner of Art. Lebedev Studio, the first and best-known [ [http://www.adme.ru/rejting_top_100_veduschih_veb_studij_runeta/2008/04/03/22308/ Ratings of top 100 Webdesign firms in Russia -2008] [http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.adme.ru%2Frejting_top_100_veduschih_veb_studij_runeta%2F2008%2F04%2F03%2F22308%2F Google translation] ] [ [http://www.adme.ru/research/2007/04/04/16614/ Ratings of top 100 Webdesign firms in Russia -2007 ] [http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.adme.ru%2Fresearch%2F2007%2F04%2F04%2F16614%2F Google translation] ru icon ] Web design studio in Russia.

Tolstaya received her education at the department of classical philology of the Leningrad State University. She moved to Moscow in the early 1980s and started working in the Nauka publishing house. Her first short story, "On a Golden Porch" (На златом крыльце сидели), appeared in "Avrora" magazine in 1983 and marked the start of Tolstaya's literary career.

Tolstaya's novel "The Slynx/Kys" (Кысь, 2000) is a dystopian novel filled with literary allusions. Several collections of short stories by Tatyana Tolstaya are popular all over Russia, and she is regarded by many as one of the foremost writers of today.

Tatyana Tolstaya is the co-host of a very successful Russian TV show "The School for Scandal" (Школа злословия), where she interviews representatives of Russian culture and politics. Her yearly schedule is divided between the US, where she spends half of the year lecturing at a university, and Russia.

Books

In translation

* "On the Golden Porch, and other stories" Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1989, then Penguin, 1990, ISBN 0-14-012275-3.
* "The Slynx" New York Review of Books Classics, 2007, ISBN 1-59-017196-9
* "White Walls" New York Review of Books Classics, 2007, ISBN 1-59-017197-7

Trivia

*The American band Okkervil River take their name from one of her stories. It is an actual river in St. Petersburg.

References

External links

* [http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~slavic/newsite/review/tolstaia.html Anna Gessen's review of Kys]
* [http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/catalog/titledetail.cfm?textType=excerpt&titleNumber=693005 Excerpt from The Slynx]
* [http://www.tema.ru/rrr/litcafe/tolstaya/ Tolstaya in the Internet litcafe] (in Russian)
* [http://www.guelman.ru/slava/kis/index.html Several reviews of Kys] (in Russian) __NOTOC__

Online texts

* [http://www.lib.ru/PROZA/TOLSTAYA/ Kys, some short stories and essays in full text from lib.ru] (in Russian)
* [http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2007/03/12/070312fi_fiction_tolstaya The short story "See the other side" in english translation in The New Yorker]
* [http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/12/26/051226fa_fact1 The short story "Yorick" in english translation in The New Yorker]