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TOP: Elena Fanailova
BOTTOM: Fanailova's book of poetry in English translation, The Russian Version

ELENA FANAILOVA

Program Bio
March-April 2007: University of Mississippi Oxford and New York
Back to More Open World Past Participants in Literature

Elena Fanailova is a poet and journalist. Born in 1962 in Voronezh, a town in Central Russia, she is a graduate of the Voronezh Medical Institute and the Voronezh State University where she majored in linguistics. Fanailova has worked as a doctor and as a university teacher. In 1995 she started her career in journalism joining Radio Liberty. Currently, Fanailova is a host of the radio program Far from Moscow that covers various topics from the Beslan siege to new Russian prose.

Fanailova’s poems were published in leading literary magazines in Russia and abroad. They are also featured in The Anthology of Contemporary Russian Women Poets (University of Iowa Press, 2005) and Crossing Centuries: the New Generation of Russian Poetry (Talisman House Publishers, 2000). Fanailova is the author of four books and a winner of the Andrey Bely Award (1999) and the Moscow Score Award (2003). She often reads her poems in literary clubs and at poetry festivals. She currently lives in Moscow.

Career Updates

  • In 2008, a book of Fanailova's poetry entitled The Russian Version, translated into English by Stephanie Sandler and Genya Turovskaya, was published in the United States by Ugly Duckling Presse. In 2010, The Russian Version won the Best Translated Book Award for Poetry.
  • Also in 2008, Fanailova travelled to the US along with Yuli Gugolev (another Open World alumnus)and Evgeny Bunimovich as part of a NEA-sponsored promotional tour connected with the release of the new Contemporary Russian Poetry: An Anthology through Dalkey Archive Press.

    • Links
  • Visit her page on Vavilon.ru (in Russian).