Dmitri Alexandrovich Prigov (1940-2007) is one of the most important figures in the literary history of the late Soviet and early post-Soviet era, and is considered one of the founders of Moscow Conceptualism. Prigov was a prolific writer, in all genres, as well as an accomplished visual artist. However, almost until the collapse of the Soviet Union, his writing circulated solely in unofficial samizdat editions and overseas publications. In 1986, he was briefly detained in a Soviet psychiatric hospital, but was released after protests from establishment literary figures. With the onset of glasnost and perestroika, he was able to publish and show his visual art in “official” venues, and also exhibited his art outside of Russia. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, his work was acknowledged with several awards, including, in 2002, the Boris Pasternak prize. He acted in films, traveled widely with performances, readings, and exhibits of his work, and often collaborated with younger artists. Prigov died, in Moscow, of a heart attack in 2007. His collected works, edited by Mark Lipovetsky, are published in Russia by Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie.

A retired American diplomat with over twenty-five years of service, Simon Schuchat worked on U.S.-Russian affairs at the State Department in Washington, and in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. His poetry can be found in several rare books, including Svelte (published by Richard Hell when Schuchat was 16), Blue Skies (Some Of Us Press), Light and Shadow (Vehicle Editions), All Shook Up (Fido Productions), and At Baoshan (Coffee House Press), as well as the anthologies None of the Above (edited by Michael Lally) and Up Late (edited by Andrei Codrescu). A native of Washington DC, he attended the University of Chicago and published the journal Buffalo Stamps before moving to New York in 1975 and becoming part of the St. Mark’s downtown writing scene. Schuchat was also active in small press publishing; he edited the 432 Review and founded Caveman. In addition to the University of Chicago, he has degrees from Yale, Harvard, and the Industrial College of the Armed Forces at the National Defense University. He taught at Fudan University in Shanghai, and led workshops at the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church. In 2016, his translation of Chinese poet Hai Zi’s lyric drama Regicide was published in Hong Kong.

Ainsley Morse has been translating 20th- and 21st-century Russian and (former-) Yugoslav literature since 2006. She teaches Russian language and literature at Dartmouth College. Previous UDP publications include the co-translation of Vsevolod Nekrasov (with Bela Shayevich, UDP 2013) and Kholin 66: Diaries and Poems (also with Shayevich, 2017). Other recent translations include the farcical Soviet pastoral Beyond Tula, by Andrey Egunov, and a collection of theoretical essays by the brilliant Formalist Yuri Tynianov. Coming up is the macabre modernist prose of Konstantin Vaginov and a number of contemporary Russian women poets.