Description
Originally written as a series of viral Facebook posts, then released as a cult hit in St. Petersburg, Meshchaninova's serialized memoir-novel tackles gender politics and abuse with honest, cutting language. Stories of A Life depicts the life of Natasha, a young woman who suffers abuse first at the hands of her stepfather Sasha and then by young men in the village nearby. This powerful, postmodern novel witnesses the Dickensian struggles of provincial life and reckons with the complicity of fellow women. Starkly down-to-earth yet funny and informal, Stories of A Life demands that we bear witness to the bleakness of a young womanhood in post-Soviet Russia. Meshchaninova is held in high regard as part of a new wave of women filmmakers in Russia, and with this collection cements her position as a woman willing to stare down the viewer and demand complicity.
Serial rights targeting The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, Guernica, and others Print and digital publicity targeting NPR, The Atlantic, Public Books, The Rumpus, Bookforum, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The White Review, Words Without Borders, World Literature Today, Asymptote, Music & Literature, Little Star, A Public Space, and others Promotion at or events pitched for Texas Book Festival, LitQuake, Brooklyn Book Festival, WordPlay, National Book Festival, Winter Institute Review copies will be sent targeting all major print and digital literary media outlets, reviewers, and booksellers; additional copies available upon request Promotion on the publisher's website (deepvellum.org), Twitter feed (@deepvellum), and Facebook page (/deepvellum); and publisher's e-newsletter
About the Author
Nataliya Meshchaninova is a cinematographer in Russia who made her directorial debut in 2014. In 2017, she broke onto the literary scene with the viral hit Stories of A Life, which became a pillar of the #metoo movement in Russia. Fiona Bell is a literary translator and scholar of Russian literature who is committed to sharing the voices of contemporary female and nonbinary Russian writers with anglophone audiences. After earning her B.A. in Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University, Bell completed an M.S t. degree in Russian at Oxford University. In 2018-2019, she was mentored by Marian Schwartz through the ALTA Emerging Translator Mentorship Program. In 2019-2020, she received a Fulbright grant to teach university-level English in Ulyanovsk, Russia. Her translation of Stories of a Life by Nataliya Meshchaninova received a 2020 PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant. Bell's essays have appeared in Full Stop, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. She is from St. Petersburg, Florida, but currently lives in New Haven, Connecticut while earning a Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literature at Yale University.
Reviews
"Tearing herself free with screams, taunts, and something very much like poetry, Meshchaninova has given us an obscenely private text as frightening as the novels of Stephen King and as sharply formed as the tragedies of Racine... it's not every year that a voice so pure and powerful emerges in Russian literature." --Galina Yuzefovich, Meduza "Meshchaninova's scenarios are skin torn to blood, pink glasses discarded as unnecessary, truth uncomfortable for the inhabitants of parallel reality." --Elena Tanakova, Gallerix "It is not often that people are ready to open up, and only the willingness to open up distinguishes real literature." --Aglaya Kurnosenko "The author, in general, is not trying to shock, she is simply not afraid to say. But this simultaneous openness and ruthlessness strikes with unexpected force and long action. Leads the reader out of their comfort zone. Makes him an involuntary and seemingly guilty observer." --Elena Makeenko, Gorky Media "This story is not about disaster, but about what happens to the survivors... This is the new Russian prose."-- Vladimir Pankratov Winner of a 2020 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant 2018 NatsBest nominee Longlisted for the NOS(E) Award
Book Information
ISBN 9781646051151
Author Nataliya Meshchaninova
Format Paperback
Page Count 112
Imprint Deep Vellum Publishing
Publisher Deep Vellum Publishing
Serial rights targeting The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, Guernica, and others Print and digital publicity targeting NPR, The Atlantic, Public Books, The Rumpus, Bookforum, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The White Review, Words Without Borders, World Literature Today, Asymptote, Music & Literature, Little Star, A Public Space, and others Promotion at or events pitched for Texas Book Festival, LitQuake, Brooklyn Book Festival, WordPlay, National Book Festival, Winter Institute Review copies will be sent targeting all major print and digital literary media outlets, reviewers, and booksellers; additional copies available upon request Promotion on the publisher's website (deepvellum.org), Twitter feed (@deepvellum), and Facebook page (/deepvellum); and publisher's e-newsletter
About the Author
Nataliya Meshchaninova is a cinematographer in Russia who made her directorial debut in 2014. In 2017, she broke onto the literary scene with the viral hit Stories of A Life, which became a pillar of the #metoo movement in Russia. Fiona Bell is a literary translator and scholar of Russian literature who is committed to sharing the voices of contemporary female and nonbinary Russian writers with anglophone audiences. After earning her B.A. in Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University, Bell completed an M.S t. degree in Russian at Oxford University. In 2018-2019, she was mentored by Marian Schwartz through the ALTA Emerging Translator Mentorship Program. In 2019-2020, she received a Fulbright grant to teach university-level English in Ulyanovsk, Russia. Her translation of Stories of a Life by Nataliya Meshchaninova received a 2020 PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant. Bell's essays have appeared in Full Stop, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. She is from St. Petersburg, Florida, but currently lives in New Haven, Connecticut while earning a Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literature at Yale University.
Reviews
"Tearing herself free with screams, taunts, and something very much like poetry, Meshchaninova has given us an obscenely private text as frightening as the novels of Stephen King and as sharply formed as the tragedies of Racine... it's not every year that a voice so pure and powerful emerges in Russian literature." --Galina Yuzefovich, Meduza "Meshchaninova's scenarios are skin torn to blood, pink glasses discarded as unnecessary, truth uncomfortable for the inhabitants of parallel reality." --Elena Tanakova, Gallerix "It is not often that people are ready to open up, and only the willingness to open up distinguishes real literature." --Aglaya Kurnosenko "The author, in general, is not trying to shock, she is simply not afraid to say. But this simultaneous openness and ruthlessness strikes with unexpected force and long action. Leads the reader out of their comfort zone. Makes him an involuntary and seemingly guilty observer." --Elena Makeenko, Gorky Media "This story is not about disaster, but about what happens to the survivors... This is the new Russian prose."-- Vladimir Pankratov Winner of a 2020 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant 2018 NatsBest nominee Longlisted for the NOS(E) Award
Book Information
ISBN 9781646051151
Author Nataliya Meshchaninova
Format Paperback
Page Count 112
Imprint Deep Vellum Publishing
Publisher Deep Vellum Publishing
