Xènia Dyakonova
Poet and translator
Poet, translator, literary critic, and lecturer in Writing. In 1999, at the age of thirteen, she moved with her family to Barcelona, where she eventually studied Theory of Literature and Comparative Literature at the University of Barcelona. Since 2001 she has published numerous selections of poems in literary magazines in Saint Petersburg and Moscow. In her mother tongue, she has published three collections of poems and, in Catalan, two, Per l’inquilí anterior (For the Inner Tenant, Blind Books, 2015) and Dos viatges (Two Journeys, Edicions del Buc, 2020). She is also the author of a book of literary criticism, Apunts de literatura russa i un afegit polonès (Notes on Russian Literature and a Polish Appendix, Cal·lígraf, 2020). In addition to publishing her own work, Dyakonova has translated from Russian to Catalan novels, essays, poems, and journalistic articles by a range of authors, notable among whom are Anton Chekhov, Anna Politkovskaya, and Alexander Kushner. She received the Vidal Alcover Prize for Translation for Narracions (Stories) by Nikolai Leskov (Edicions 1984, 2020) and the Third PEN Award for her translation of Vera Pavlova’s book A banda i banda del petó (On Both Sides of the Kiss, El Gall, 2018). She presently teaches at the School of Writing of the Barcelona Athenaeum and works with several written and audiovisual media outlets.
Update: 9 July 2021