I emigrated to Canada with my two sons at a time when nobody could imagine the imminent imploding of the Soviet Empire. I left behind Moscow, the city where I grew up, and a cushy job of a lecturer at the Moscow State University. My initiation into Canadian life began in Montreal at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation where I worked as a producer and broadcaster; it has continued in Vancouver where I've been teaching Art, Cultural History, and Russian Literature in the Simon Fraser University Liberal Arts Program. Every second year, I take students from the 55 + Program  on field trips to Russia, and former Soviet Republics such as Armenia, Georgia and Lithuania.

       Having left Russia, I never intended to quit fiction writing, so I had to reinvent myself in another language climbing the Everest of English in fits and starts.  It took me more then ten years to reach base camp. Every now and then  I let my Sisyphus stone roll down and follow it to the land of my native tongue. My four previous collections of short stories were written in English. The latest novel "Larissa" is a translation from Russian. Of the few things that can lure me away from my desk, dancing tango is close to the top of the list.

 

 

 

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