Oksana Marafioti

A classically trained pianist, she graduated from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas' Professional Film Crew Training Program, and worked in film before moving into writing.

Her works have appeared in Slate[3] and Time,[4] and Immigrant Voices Vol.II (Penguin Random House, 2015).

She was the 2013 BMI - Library of Congress Kluge Center Fellow and the 2020 recipient of the Picador Guest Professorship Award from the University of Leipzig, Germany.

[5] Along with many interviews and panel appearances, Oksana has presented her research on Magical Realism In Soviet Russia at the Library of Congress in 2013[6] and participated in the C-SPAN panel discussion on race and ethnicity in 2015.

[7] In 2018, Oksana founded Lounge Writers, an online creative writing studio that offers classes by award-winning and best-selling authors to help writers of all levels explore and enhance their craft.