Zinaida Palvanova was born in Mordovia into a family of “enemies of the people” released from Temlag. Her post-war childhood was spent in the Moscow region, a hundred kilometers from the capital. She lived in Moscow since 1963 until her emigration in 1990. While living in Moscow, she worked many odd jobs as a linotypist, nurse, sociologist, security guard, etc. She was married to Victor Enyutin, a poet, writer, and thinker, who emigrated from the USSR in 1975. In 1983 she was admitted to the Union of Writers of the USSR. Her poems and translations were published in major Russian literary magazines, e.g. Novyi Mir, Druzhba Narodov, The Continent, Yunost, Neva, Ogonyok, 22, Aleph, Artikl’, Interpoezia, Ierusalimsky Zhurnal, Literaturnaya Gazeta, the almanacs Day of Poetry, Tsomet, and many other periodicals. A winner of several literary awards, she has authored fifteen books of poetry.