The House of Tolstoy, or Tolstoi, is a family of Russian gentry that acceded to the high aristocracy of the Russian Empire. The name Tolstoy is itself derived from the Russian adjective "толстый". They are the descendants of Andrey Kharitonovich Tolstoy, who moved from Chernigov to Moscow and served under Vasily II of Moscow in the 15th century. The "wild Tolstoys", as they were known in the high society of Imperial Russia, have left a lasting legacy in Russian politics, military history, literature, and fine arts.
George Saunders is an American writer of short stories, essays, novellas, children's books, and novels. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, McSweeney's, and GQ. He also contributed a weekly column, American Psyche, to The Guardian's weekend magazine between 2006 and 2008.
Yasnaya Polyana is a writer's house museum, the former home of the writer Leo Tolstoy. It is 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) southwest of Tula, Russia, and 200 kilometres (120 mi) from Moscow.
Ruth Ozeki is an American-Canadian author, filmmaker and Zen Buddhist priest. Her books and films, including the novels My Year of Meats (1998), All Over Creation (2003), A Tale for the Time Being (2013), and The Book of Form and Emptiness (2021) seek to integrate personal narrative and social issues, and deal with themes relating to science, technology, environmental politics, race, religion, war and global popular culture. Her novels have been translated into more than thirty languages. She teaches creative writing at Smith College where she is the Grace Jarcho Ross 1933 Professor of Humanities in the Department of English Language and Literature.
George Dmitrievich Grebenstchikoff was a writer and professor of Russian literature.
Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer regarded as one of the greatest and most influential authors of all time. He received nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature every year from 1902 to 1906 and for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, 1902, and 1909.
Valentin Fyodorovich Bulgakov was the last secretary of Leo Tolstoy and his biographer. He was director of a number of literary museums and was engaged in Tolstoyan, pacifist activities. He was imprisoned by the Tsarist regime and in a Nazi internment camp. During the final 20 years of his life he was head of the Yasnaya Polyana museum.
Viktor Ivanovich Likhonosov was a Russian writer, laureate of the Russian State Prize (1988), the International Mikhail Sholokhov prize and the first Yasnaya Polyana award (2003).
Vladimir Vladimirovich Lichutin is a Soviet Russian writer, a major proponent of the derevenschiki movement of the late 20th century literature, best known for his Raskol (1990-1996) epic. Most of Lichutin's novels and novelets are based on the life of real people of the coastal White Sea areas of his native Pomorje region.
The Debut Prize is an award for young authors of literary works in the Russian language.
A Tale for the Time Being is a metafictional novel by Ruth Ozeki narrated by two characters, a sixteen-year-old Japanese American girl living in Tokyo who keeps a diary, and a Japanese American writer living on an island off the coast of British Columbia who finds the diary of the young woman washed ashore some time after the 2011 tsunami that devastated Japan.
The Yasnaya Polyana Literary Award is an annual all-Russian literary award that was founded in 2003 by the Leo Tolstoy Museum Estate and Samsung Electronics. The award is presented for the best traditional-style novel written in Russian or translated into Russian.
Elliot Ackerman is an American author and former Marine Corps special operations team leader. He is the New York Times–bestselling author of the novels 2034: A Novel of the Next World War, Red Dress In Black and White, Waiting for Eden, Dark at the Crossing, and Green on Blue, and the upcoming Halcyon: A Novel, as well as the memoirs The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan and Placesand Names: On War, Revolution, and Returning. His books have received significant critical acclaim, including nominations for the National Book Award, the Andrew Carnegie Medals in both fiction and non-fiction, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He served as a White House fellow in the Obama administration and is a Marine veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is a contributing writer to The Atlantic and The New York Times. He was awarded the Silver Star, the Bronze Star with Valor, and a Purple Heart during his five deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq.
Guzel Shamilyevna Yakhina is a Russian author and screenwriter. She is a winner of the Big Book literary prize and the Yasnaya Polyana Literary Award.
Nikolay Kononov is a Russian writer and journalist. He was editor-in-chief of The Firm's Secret from 2014 to 2017, then editorial director until 2018. The author of four books: Deux Sine Machina: Stories of 20 crazy people who made business in Russia from scratch (2011), Code of Durov. The real story of the social network "VKontakte" and its creator (2012), Author, scissors, paper. How to write impressive texts quickly. 14 lessons (2017), The Uprising (2019), and The Night We Fled (2022).
Eugene Germanovich Vodolazkin is a Russian-Ukrainian scholar and author. Born in Kiev in 1964, he graduated from the Philological Department of Kiev University in 1986. In the same year, he entered graduate school at the Pushkin House in the department of Old Russian literature under Dmitry Likhachov. In 1990, he defended his graduate thesis 'On the Translation of the "Chronicle of George Hamartolos"'.
Pavel Valeryevich Basinsky is a Russian writer and literary critic. Member of the Union of Russian Writers (1993), academician of the Academy of Russian Literature (1997). Member of the permanent jury of the Solzhenitsyn Prize (1997). The author of the most complete uncensored biography of Maxim Gorky, published in 2005. Laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Federation (2018).
Narine Abgaryan (Armenian: Նարինե Յուրիի Աբգարյան is a Russian writer and blogger of Armenian origin. In 2011, Abgaryan was a nominee of Big Book and Laureate of Yasnaya Polyana Literary Award, Russia, in 2016.
Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes is a Russian television historical fiction drama series based on the novel Zuleikha by Guzel Yakhina and aired on channel Russia-1 in April 2020. The series stars Chulpan Khamatova as Zuleikha Valieva, a peasant woman from the Tatar village in the Soviet Union.
Igor Mixailovich Afanasyev is a Russian writer and veteran of the Afghan war. He was born in Pskov in 1962. He served in the Afghan war from 1983 to 1985, as a sapper in the eastern province of Ghazni. Afanasyev initially posted about his experiences of the war on the internet; this led to several books that have been acclaimed in his native Russia. Among these are:
