ONLINE: Katya Kazbek

media release: A Room of One's Own welcomes Katya Kazbek, author of Little Foxes Took Up Matches, for a conversation on Crowdcast with fellow author Sophia Shalmiyev!

About Little Foxes Took Up Matches: When Mitya was two years old, he swallowed his grandmother’s sewing needle. For his family, it marks the beginning of the end, the promise of certain death. For Mitya, it is a small, metal treasure that guides him from within. As he grows, his life mirrors the uncertain future of his country, which is attempting to rebuild itself after the collapse of the Soviet Union, torn between its past and the promise of modern freedom. Mitya finds himself facing a different sort of ambiguity: is he a boy, as everyone keeps telling him, or is he not quite a boy, as he often feels?

Told with deep empathy, humor, and a bit of surreality, Little Foxes Took Up Matches is a revelation about the life of one community in a country of turmoil and upheaval, glimpsed through the eyes of a precocious and empathetic child, whose heart and mind understand that there are often more than two choices. An arresting coming of age, an exploration of gender, a modern folktale, a comedy about family, Katya Kazbek breaks out as a new voice to watch.

Katya Kazbek is a bilingual Russian/English writer, translator, and editor who cofounded the online magazine Supamodu. A graduate of Parsons and Oxford’s writing program, Kazbek received her MFA from Columbia University. She lives between New York, New York, and Moscow, Russia.

Sophia Shalmiyev is the author of Mother Winter. She lives in Portland with her two children.