Anastasia Edel MFA '14 Speaks on Becoming a Writer

Anastasia Edel MFA '14, who grew up in the former Soviet Union, spoke to the Advice to Writers blog about the events and influences that made her a professional writer.

"When I was in sixth grade, my mother exchanged twenty-five kilograms of used newspapers for a coupon that entitled us to buy a copy of Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel “Master and Margarita,” now in wide circulation.  I read it in three nights, and to this day remain under its spell. It has everything a novel should have—language, satire, adventure, magic, philosophy, invention; good and evil. Each time I read it, I find something I haven’t noticed before." 

Edel is the author of Russia: Putin's Playground. Her work has been published in the New York Times, The New York Review of Books, Project Syndicate, Quartz, and World Literature Today. She teaches Russian politics and culture at UC-Berkeley.