Biography
Oksana Vasyakina was born on December 18, 1989, in the city of Ust-Ilimsk, Irkutsk in a working-class family. She wrote her first poetic text at the age of 14.[3] In 2016 she graduated from the poetry department of the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute. She studied in the workshop of Yevgeny Yuryevich Sidorov.
Vasyakina has participated in poetry festivals and slams in Novosibirsk, Perm, Vladimir and Moscow.[4] Her work has been published in a variety of magazines, including Vozduch, Colta.ru, and Snob.[5][6] In 2019 she was awarded with the prestigious Lyceum Pushkin Prize for her poetic cycle "When We Lived in Siberia".[7]
Vasyakina's first poetry collection, Женская проза (English: Women's Prose or Chick lit) was published in 2016, followed by the self-published Ветер ярости (English: Wind of Rage) in 2017. Wind of Rage is a lengthy poem focusing on the experiences of a sexual abuse survivor and was originally distributed for free.[8] In 2019, Wind of Rage along with several other poems and interviews was re-published by AST in a collection of the same name. An English translation by Jonathan Brooks Platt, entitled "Wind of Fury -- Songs of Fury", was published in Sinister Wisdom in 2018.[9]
Vasyakina's first novel Wound, a memoir about her recently deceased mother, was published in 2021. The novel was shortlisted for Big Book Award.[10] Wound was followed by two sequels, Steppe (2022) and Rose (2023). Steppe chronicles Oksana's relationship with her father, a truck driver who died of AIDS, while Rose is centered around the short life of her aunt Sventlana and deals with Oksana's coming to terms with her own mortality and mental illness.[11] An English-language edition of Wound, translated by Elina Alter, is to be published by Catapult in 2023.[12]