Katherine (Katya) Dovlatov moved from St. Petersburg, Russia to New York City at the age of 11, when her mother decided to emigrate. She worked in marketing and promotions in the music industry in New York. In the mid 1990's she moved to Russia to rediscover her roots, working as a translator for multinational companies. She then moved to London to study Russian Literature at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at UCL. Translating her father's Pushkin Hills is her first attempt at literary translation. She currently lives between NYC and London, working as an interior decorator. Follow Katherine on Twitter at @KatDovlatov.

 

Sergei Dovlatov was born in Ufa, Bashkiria (USSR), in 1941, where his family was sent during the evacuation. He dropped out of the University of Leningrad after two years and was drafted into the army, serving as a guard in high-security prison camps, an experience that is reflected in his work, The Zone. In 1965 he began to work as a journalist, first in Leningrad and then in Tallinn, Estonia, which is described in a collection of stories, The Compromise. Unable to publish his work in Russia and after a period of intense harassment by the authorities, he emigrated to the United States in 1978, publishing 12 books and co-founding a Russian-language weekly newspaper, The New American. Dovlatov lived in New York City until his death in 1990. Posthumously, Sergei Dovlatov became one of the best loved and most read Russian writers of the latter 20th Century. His works are translated into 29 languages, in Russia he is the subject of at least six documentaries, his works are performed on stage and are made into films, and are taught at schools and universities. There is a street named after him in Queens, New York.

Sergei Dovlatov's Official Page on Facebook, managed by Katherine Dovlatov.