Stories of a Life
Debut novel by a Russian filmmaker, originally shared as viral Facebook posts and then winner of a 2020 PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant; will speak to the #metoo era.
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.
