Dmitry Danilov

Dmitry Danilov (Moscow, 1969) is a Russian poet, prose writer, and playwright. He has worked as an editor and journalist and, in a little more than two decades, has established himself as one of the most highly regarded contemporary Russian writers. His work has received numerous literary and theatre awards and has been translated and staged internationally.

He is the author of numerous novels, poetry collections, and plays. His work is characterized by a distinctive blend of documentary realism, irony, absurdity, and the everyday, while across genres his writing is marked by a singular poetic voice rooted in conversational language, precise observation of reality, and subtle humour. In 2015, the literary magazine Novy Mir awarded him the Anthologia Poetry Prize for outstanding achievement in contemporary Russian poetry, recognizing his poetry collection The Switch. His novel Horizontal Position (2010), written in diary form, was shortlisted for the Big Book, NOS, and National Bestseller awards. His novel Description of a City (2012) was shortlisted for the Big Book Award, while There Are Things More Important than Football (2015) received the Nonconformism Prize. His novel Sasha, Hello! (2021), a dystopian story exploring the boundaries of freedom, guilt, and state control, received the prestigious Yasnaya Polyana Award in 2022.

Danilov’s plays The Man from Podolsk, Seryozha Is Very Stupid, Witness Testimonies, What Did You Do Last Night?, and Choose Three have been staged at numerous theatres in Russia and abroad. For his work in theatre, he received the Golden Mask Award (2018) and the Moscow Art Prize (2021), while his prose earned him the Andrei Bely Prize (2019). Feature films have been made based on his plays The Man from Podolsk and Witness Testimonies. In 2020, a dramatization of his collection Two States was broadcast as part of the Drama Programme of Radio Belgrade. His novels Horizontal Position, Description of a City, and Sasha, Hello!, as well as the poetry collections The Switch, Two States, Grey Sky, and Sorrow Will Last Forever, have been published in Serbian. His work has been translated into English, Italian, Dutch, German, French, Serbian, and other languages.