Elena Kuznetsova

Yelena Anatolyevna Kuznetsova is a contemporary writer working in the genres of historical and social fantasy. According to the author, literary activity had not been part of her life plans until one day Yevgeny Sergeyevich Krasnitsky said to her bluntly: “I want your surname to be on the cover of the book.”

For more than a decade, Yelena Anatolyevna worked professionally in handicrafts, mainly knitting; after accumulating experience, she began teaching courses. She published extensively in specialized handicrafts periodicals: the instructional course “What the Instructions Keep Silent About” was published in 2002–2003 in the magazine Knitting — Your Hobby. After that, she collaborated with other publications as well, where both knitted models and master classes on various kinds of handicrafts were published — she wrote a great deal, but exclusively technological instructions, model descriptions, and descriptions of her own knitting developments.

When the popular contemporary author of Slavic fantasy, Yevgeny Krasnitsky, who died in 2013, conceived shortly before his death the idea of expanding the boundaries of the world of his “Otrok” cycle and making an attempt to show the female part of the world in which the books’ characters live, Krasnitsky found several coauthors, among them Yelena Kuznetsova and Irina Grad. At the same time, Yelena became Krasnitsky’s technical secretary and editor, since it was necessary to select the literature needed for the work, systematize the archives, proofread the texts, and record on a диктофон both the author’s general reflections on the future of his world and detailed instructions on specific episodes.

Yelena Kuznetsova said about herself: “...As needed, I supervised work with the other members of the team, and during Yevgeny Sergeyevich’s illness I organized their assistance. The Prince’s sudden death forced me, as one of the people most informed about his creative plans, to assume the obligation of continuing his work.”