Natalia Klyuchareva

area: Literature

Key Facts

nationality

Russia

area

Literature

residence

Zhuchki (Moscow Region)

recommending institution

BMeiA

time period

April 2014 - May 2014

Natalia Klyuchareva is a poet and prose writer born in Perm in 1981 and a recipient of the Debut prize. She studied first in Perm, then in Yaroslavl, and graduated from the Philology Department of the Yaroslavl Pedagogical University. She lives in the village of Zhuchki (Moscow Region), working as a journalist for September 1st gazette. She began writing poetry and prose when still in school, and lists Chekhov, Bunin, Andrei Platonov, Yuri Koval as her literary teachers. Her recent publications include Russia on Wheels (a novel, translated into 5 languages to date), SOS (a novel, Limbus Press, 2009,) a book of essays, A Village of Fools, and White Pioneers, a book of poetry (from Argo-Risk, Tver, 2006). Her short story "One Year in Paradise" (translated by Mariya Gusev) was published in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Summer 2009, and as part of the Rasskazy anthology by Tin House books (also in 2009).

Projectinfo

I plan to finish a children's book and to work on my new novel about women-volunteers and the volunteer movement in Russia.

Documentation

I come from the country with the totally different culture and it was very interesting for me and very useful for my job to just walk around the city and watch people on the streets: how they speak to each other, how they behave in their everyday life and how that life is organized. I've made a lot of observations witch helped me to understand the way of Europe, the place of Russia and different variants of our common and individual future.
I was in Vienna with my little daugther, that's why I spent a lot of time on the playgrounds. The observations I've made there are extremely important for the project I'm working at for many years: discovering the roots of Russian political authoritarism in the family life, in the relations between parents and children.
The style of parenting in Europe is absolutely different than in Russia. And it was very important for me to learn more about it not only for my writer's but also for my mother's job. Because in Russia when you try to stop reproducing the authoritarian scenario in your own family you have nothing to rely on and you have to fight all alone against the whole System...
Also during my stay in Vienna I was working on a book of tales. And many of my Vienna impressions were integrated in that text. For example one of the characters in this book was inspired by Friedensreich Hundertwasser.