(*1980)
After earning a degree in Russian Studies at Charles University, Prague, Alena Machoninová went on to do a postgradual course in Comparative Literature and to establish her qualification as a Russian scholar, translator and prosaist. Her thesis on Russian minimalist poetry won the Jan Palach Award. Afterwards, she taught Czech Language and Literature at the Moscow State University and at the Russian State University for the Humanities. She writes and lectures on Russian literature of the 20th and 21st century, mainly on unofficial Soviet poetry, labor camp literature and contemporary fiction. She editted and in collaboration with Jan Machonin translated the anthology of the Lianozovo Group poets entitled The Thiefs of Day-to-Day Moments (2016). She has penned afterwords to books by Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Andrei Bitov, Helena Frischer, Tamara Petkevich, Alexei Salnikov, Maria Stepanova, Andrei Platonov and others. Moreover, she has translated some of them. She won the Magnesia Litera Award nomination for the translation of the novel Daniel Stein, Interpreter by Lyudmila Ulitskaya in 2012. Her research articles, essays and critiques appear in Czech and Russian academic journals.
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