Vladimir Sotnikov was born in Belarus in a family of village schoolteachers. He graduated from the Gorky Literary Institute, where he took part in Vladimir Makanin’s seminars on creative writing. His short stories, novellas, and novels have been published in the journals Yunost’, Oktyabr’, Znamya, Kontinent, and Yasnaya Polyana. He is the author of numerous children’s adventure books as well as adult fiction, including the novels Pokrov (Pokrov), Spilled Water (Prolitaya voda), Emma’s Smile (Ulybka Emmy), Kholochye (Kholoch’e), Ea (Ona). He wrote the script for the film adaptation of Andrei Bitov’s novel, Flying-Away Monakhov and for numerous television series. He is the winner of the Bunin Prize for “Philosophical Depth of Artistic Imagery”. He is a professor at the Free University.