Maria Stepanova Holds Creative Workshop at the Higher School of Economics
The regular public event ‘Literary Wednesdays’ took place at the Higher School of Economics. Russian writer and poet, Maria Stepanova, presented her new book ‘In Memory of Memory’ (Novoe Izdatel’stvo, 2017).
At the beginning of the meeting, Maria Stepanova told the story of the book’s creation. She always knew that the book would be written eventually: ‘The idea was to remember, to recall and to write.’ After two unsuccessful attempts at an interview with Linor Goralik for the ‘Private Persons’ project, she discovered that it was much more interesting to answer questions about relatives and ancestors than to talk about herself. The writer decided to reconstruct her family and the way it was inscribed in the history of previous century. It was especially difficult, she says, to create some structure, that is, a ‘trajectory’, for the book amid such a huge array of information which also had significant gaps.
We live in a time in which ‘the past has not yet ended,’ Maria explained. Today, not one single storyline is the subject of public consensus. We are haunted by uncertainty every step of the way. However, it is not too late to fix everything and rectify the situation- it is enough to simply remember.
At the meeting, Maria Stepanova read an excerpt from her book and answered questions from the audience.
