Lyudmila Petrushevskaya

Lyudmila Stefanovna Petrushevskaya (Russian: Людмила Стефановна Петрушевская; born 26 May 1938) is a Russian writer, novelist and playwright. She began her career writing short stories and plays, which the Soviet government often censored and published several well-respected prose works following perestroika.

She is best known for her plays, novels, The Time: Night, and collections of short stories, notably There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby. In 2017, she published a memoir, The Girl from the Metropol Hotel. She is considered one of Russia's premier living literary figures, having been compared in style to Anton Chekhov and in influence to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Her works have won several accolades, including the Russian Booker Prize, the Pushkin Prize, and the World Fantasy Award.

Her creative interests and successes are wide-ranging, as she is also a singer and has worked in film animation, screenwriting, and painting.