MARIA STEPANOVA (*1972 in Moscow) is a journalist, essayist and Russia’s most internationally successful contemporary poet. She has received many awards for her work. In 2023, for 'Girls Without Clothes' she received the Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding. Her prose debut 'In Memory of Memory' (2018) is considered a milestone in the literature of memory and has been translated into 20 languages. She currently lives in Berlin.