Author’s Bio:

I was born in Moscow and grew up there, before immigrating to the United States in my early 20s. After studying economics and finance, both in Moscow and in the US, I spent more than a decade working on Wall Street, first as a bond analyst, then as a fixed-income portfolio manager. During the 2007-2008 financial crisis I worked at the proprietary bond desk of a large European bank. As I watched the world unravel around me, my inner cynical, worldly New Yorker got jolted out of her comfortable shell. It occurred to me then that to spend the rest of my days at the prop desk, to go through life with ‘I’ve-seen-it-all’ jadedness would be an awful waste of my potential. I could do better things than run bond scenarios on Bloomberg.

After leaving Wall Street, I hung around New York, rediscovering life and meeting people outside the hermetic circle of investment bankers. I attended some Occupy Wall Street meetings, took a philosophy course on Immanuel Kant, and played poker in Atlantic City. That’s when I was struck by the idea to write it all down. I began to write essays, short stories, screenplays, trying to figure out my themes and my style. This novel, ‘The Hermit’, is the culmination of a decade’s worth of writing and polishing my craft.

These days I live in Philadelphia with my husband (a fellow poker player), a rescue cat, and an English Bulldog named Lincoln.