Anna Vladimirovna Krushelnitskaya was born in 1975 in a small town in the Soviet Far East. She grew up in the Siberian city of Chita, where she graduated from the Trans-Baikal State University with a degree in Foreign Language Education. Anna Vladimirovna taught college in Russia before moving to the US in 2004. In the US, she lost her patronymic and gained experience working as a teacher, court interpreter, Red Cross instructor, and garden hand. Anna lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with her husband and three children. She enjoys freelance writing, doing literary translation, and blogging on Soviet topics.