Biography

Marina and Sergey Dyachenko debuted as co-authors in 1994 - their first novel, The Gate-Keeper (Privratnik), was awarded the Crystal Table Award of Zoryany Shlyakh Fantasy club and was named the best debut on Eurocon-96. The second book - the collection of short stories, Ritual - was published in Kiev by Krang press. Azbuka press has published the novels Skrut, Witch's Age (Ved'min Vek) and The Cave (Peshera), AST press - a trilogy Wanderers (Skital'tsy) (The Gate-Keeper (Privratnik), The Scar (Shram), The Successor (Preyemnik)), a collection of novellas and short stories, Roots of Stone (Korni Kamnya); and a novel Execution (Kazn').

At Strannik-97, the second Congress of SF&F writers of Russia The Scar (Shram) received the Sword in the Stone Award as the best fantasy fiction of 1995-1996.

Witch's Age (Ved'min Vek) was awarded a literary prize of the Raduga magazine in 1997 and a prize of Zilantcon - The Big Zilant (Kazan) in 1998).

In 1999 at Interpresscon-99, a Congress of SF&F writers (St. Petersburg) their novella, The Burnt Tower (Gorelaya Bashnya), was awarded the Interpresscon Prize.

On Strannik-99, the fourth Congress of SF&F writers of Russia The Cave won the Moon Sword Award as the best mystic literature work of 1997-1999.

Marina and Sergey are married and live in Kiev.

Sergey Dyachenko is a former doctor, a psychiatrist (which helps to gain the deep insight into the human psychology) and holds an M. S. in biology (which reflects his analytical frame of mind)...

Marina Dyachenko, a. k. a. Marina Shirshova, is a former actress (which reflects who knows what, most probably - a certain innate romanticism and inclination to dramatic identifications)...

Sergey D. graduated from Cinematography College (Scenario Faculty). A number of his screenplays, documentary and feature, were made into movies. The most famous of those are the TV-miniseries Nikolay Vavilov and a feature movie Hunger-33; he has won the Ukrainian State Award, conquered a number of impressive movie festivals, won Literaturnaya newspaper and Ogonyok magazine awards...

Marina D. has started her literary career before she learned how to write, at the age of four, being the author of single-copy books named The Tale of the Steam Locomotive and Thief's Pranks. Inclined to the construction of word chains, she, nevertheless, entered Kiev College of Theater, performed on stage, including the role of Desdemona, but still could not could not get inspired for public performances. Shunning the spotlight, she has finally found her haven in front of a friendly monitor screen...

Having united in matrimony, the co-authors formed a harmonious double harness, not pulling in the opposite directions, but more like catamaran: try and turn it over!..

The role of the third support point is performed by a well-chosen third co-author - a magical cat, Dyushes, taking the traditional keyboard runs before the beginning of work on a new novel.

Taken from the Esli magazine interview:

 "Q. - What fantasy direction do you identify your work with?

Marina: - When one talks about "fantasy directions", I imagine a kind of an octopus waiving its tentacles-directions. And we are entangled in these tentacles - we started with pure fairy-tale, then villainously cheated on the genre and sunk into social fantasy. Then we got tired, shrugged it off and are now writing a good old fantasy under a conventional name All Is Possible for Wizards.

Sergey: - Personally, I named our creative method "M-realism". What is it? It is not clearly known. Some may understand it as "meta-realism", others - as "magical". I prefer the notion "Marinka's realism". Don't think that I'm just flattering with my co-author - she loves me anyway. It is just the fact that all we write is taken through the prism of her soul. Hence the initial romanticism, the evergreen humanism, the belief in the better future and white magic. Me, I am only spoiling it all with my psychology, and sometimes - even with psychiatry. She lives by ideals, I live by scars."

The Esli magazine, #10, 1999

© Marina and Sergey Dyachenko © Russian Science Fiction and Fantasy     Editor-in-Chief Dmitriy Vatolin © 2000 Russian version by Pavel Petrienko, Aleksey Andreyev © 2000 English translation by Katerina Pugacheva Send us your comments, proposals, opinions.