Biography
Born in Moscow, in the family of a pioneering Soviet sociologist, Olga Grushin spent her early childhood in Prague. After returning to Moscow, she studied art history at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and journalism at Moscow State University. In 1989, she was given a full scholarship to Emory University, and became the first Russian citizen to enroll in and complete a four-year American college program, graduating summa cum laude in 1993.
Since coming to the United States, she has been an interpreter for President Jimmy Carter, a cocktail waitress in a jazz bar, a translator at the World Bank, a research analyst at a leading Washington law firm, and, most recently, an editor at Harvard University's Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.
Her short fiction has appeared in Partisan Review, The Massachusetts Review, Confrontation, and Art Times. The Dream Life of Sukhanov is her first novel; she is now at work on her second.
A citizen of both Russia and the United States, Grushin lives near Washington, DC, with her husband and son.
Author Q&A
When did you start writing?
My first writing attempts date from the age of four; I still have a few sheets of paper covered with block pencilled letters, a number of them backwards. The earliest preserved story starts, rather dramatically, with a knock on the door; when the princess answers the door, she finds several princes behind it, “all in a row handsome.”
From that age, I wrote continuously. When we lived in Prague, we had a family tradition: every year I would write a long tale, my father would then type it (“Original orthography and punctuation preserved,” as our title page invariably announced) and bind it, I would supply illustrations, and we would present the resulting book as a gift to my mother on her birthday. Three or four of these books have survived. The first one, "Tale of a Lazy Princess,” composed when I was seven, was rather autobiographical in nature: the heroine was a princess who resented being told by her father the king to make her bed or cook him dinner; naturally, there was a suitable moral, as her domestic training stood her in good stead when she was kidnapped by a dragon with a liking for neatness and gourmet meals.
Could you tell us about your education in Prague and Moscow?
My three years in a Soviet school in Prague were full of red banners unfurling, Lenin busts towering over marble staircases, mass outings to black-and-white films eulogizing Soviet heroes, songs about Lenin’s birthday, and much else in a similar vein (the school was, after all, a Soviet outpost in a nearly Western environment), but I was too young to notice, too in love with the magic of Prague, and generally too busy having a very happy childhood.
The world seemed so much starker upon our return to Moscow in 1981: the neighborhood school, to which I had been assigned, turned out to be a grim, oppressive place. We underwent gas mask drills and were taught to disassemble Kalashnikovs (I was never any good). After a year or two I started looking for another school.
I finally transfered in 1984, just after turning thirteen. The new school, known throughout Moscow simply as “Number 45,” was a marked contrast to the old. It emphasized English studies, was challenging and progressive, and full of amazing teachers, from a wonderful if quirky principal (whose old-guard ideas of Marxist equality included, among other things, banning earrings for girls and mandatory crew cuts for boys, yet who let us read Lord of the Flies and Catcher in the Rye in the vernacular) to our literature teacher, my favorite, who quite happily ignored the prescribed Soviet curriculum in favor of Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Kirkegaard. It was a unique place to be, brimming with stories and characters, and it created a fascinating daily backdrop to the fascinating changes just beginning in the world outside.
What books did you read as a child?
While living in Moscow, I read many classics in translation: Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh, Andersen, Astrid Lindgren (though my favorite was not Pippy Longstocking, but Karlson, for some unfathomable reason virtually unknown in America), Tove Jansson's wonderful Moomin books, and Lewis Carroll, whom I loved most of all. There were some Russian and Polish writers too; Yuri Olesha and Ian Bzhekhva come to mind. Later, when I was nearly six, we moved to Prague for a while, and in a quiet corner of the city I discovered a most wonderful library overflowing with books I had never heard about in Russia. I brought piles of them home, devoured them greedily, and went back for more every week. I was too young to pay attention to the titles and the authors, and as a result those years left me with tantalizing memories of many truly magical stories—about a merry ghost living in an ancient castle, about a family of foxes in the springtime woods, about a girl riding a giant balloon over winter-bound towns—stories I have been trying to trace ever since, in vain. Only once did I succeed in finding one of these “lost books,” as I had come to think of them. Shortly after arriving in America, I mentioned to my college roommate that as a seven- or eight-year-old I had chanced upon an obscure children’s story I had really liked but by now had largely forgotten; I remembered only a little girl discovering a land of snow beyond a wardrobe full of fur coats—and something about a lion. Needless to say, this book was not lost for long. I’m still looking for the others, though; to this day, I love reading children’s books.
How did you become a student at Emory University?
In 1988, after my high school graduation, I enrolled in the journalism school of the Moscow State University. My choice of subject was not accidental—writing had been one of the few constants in my life, and journalism was in my blood: my grandmother, mother, brother, and sister-in-law were, or had at one point been, journalists; my father taught courses at the department; a couple of my cousins were attending the program at the time. What followed, however, was entirely accidental: chosen as one of the interpreters for a group of visiting academics from Emory University, I met and talked at length with one Dr. Ellen Mickiewicz, a prominent scholar of Soviet mass media. When she casually asked whether I would like to come to Emory, I casually replied, “Sure.” I thought it to be joking banter and soon forgot all about it, but some months later, in the spring, I received a letter from the University President, offering me a one-way ticket to Atlanta and a full four-year scholarship. It so happened that I would be the first Russian citizen ever to graduate with an American college degree.
What was your career path after college?
I have always been interested in trying my hand at different things. During my college years, I worked at a snack bar (a crash course in unfamiliar sodas and candy bars), in a video arcade (quite an education in American comic book superheroes), in a post office during Christmas season (an eye-opening, if exhausting, experience), and at an information desk (I hope all the misdirected people forgave me). For one summer I was a hostess at a fashionable after-hours café, where I was hired, I was told, for my accent and my then-predominantly-black wardrobe; I gave dessert tours, and learned a lot about coffee and chocolate. I even tried a stint at Victoria’s Secret; I did not last very long, though, as I did not own any frilly skirts or floral dresses, which I seem to remember as an unwritten requirement.
As my 1993 graduation neared, I faced the quandary of where to go after college, and did something unexpected: I applied to law schools. I did not have a clear idea of what I wanted to do, apart from writing (which, as everyone told me, was no way to make a living). I had taken a couple of classes at the Emory law school, and I thought them rather interesting; it seemed an easy, if somewhat random, choice, not to mention an effective means of pursuing the American Dream. Luckily, I tried working at a Washington, DC law firm for a year before making my final decision—and soon realized that such a life, perks and all, was not for me. The grueling experience left me no time for writing, and after many unhappy months I quit on an impulse, moved to a basement studio, found a job as a waitress in a local jazz bar, bought a typewriter, and began work on a short story. The next year or two were not easy, but after a while I started publishing my first short pieces. Eventually, in 1996, I happened upon a perfect job as an editor at Harvard University’s Dumbarton Oaks Research Institute. The place was wonderful—a beautiful mansion with El Grecos and Renoirs on the walls, lovely gardens, thousands of old books, and fascinating people—and I worked there until I could dedicate myself to full-time writing. I left in early 2001 to work on my first novel.
Which authors do you most admire?
I have to start with Nabokov and Gogol, my two favorite writers, but the list is quite long, and I add to it all the time. In no particular order, then: Chekhov, Andrei Bely, Bulgakov, Flaubert, Proust, Apollinaire, Laurence Sterne, Henry James, James Salter, Lawrence Durrell, Paul Bowles, Jorge Luis Borges, Lewis Carroll, Bohumil Hrabal, Dino Buzzati, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Dante, Euripides, and the poets of the Russian Silver Age, to name just a few.
|
|
| |
|
|
