Irina Ivannikova

Irina Yuryevna Ivannikova is a Russian writer and author of works for children, a member of the Union of Russian Writers, and a member of TO DAR (the Creative Association of Children’s Authors).

Irina Ivannikova was born on April 22, 1985, in Berlin, where her father was serving. She comes from a family of doctors: her father is a surgeon and her mother is a therapist. Since 1990, Irina Yuryevna has lived in Ryazan.

Her grandmothers had a tremendous influence on her, both human and literary. Yekaterina Filippovna Chernoglazova (her paternal grandmother), who had an agronomy degree, possessed excellent literary and musical taste, recited many 19th- and 20th-century poets by heart (Pushkin, Fet, Pleshcheyev, Yesenin), sang romances (“In My Little Room It Is Light…,” “Burn, Burn, My Star…”) and instilled in her a love for her native nature. Her other grandmother, Tatyana Dmitrievna Koblova, was a medical worker, a feldsher-midwife with many years of work experience, and subscribed to numerous children’s magazines; Irina and her cousin eagerly read Murzilka, Tramway, Young Naturalist, and Merry Pictures.

She has been writing poetry and short stories since the age of eight. Her first poetry publication appeared in 1997 in the Ryazan regional newspaper Kolokolchik, edited by the front-line poet Boris Ivanovich Zhavoronkov, who warmly accepted the poem “Kind Fairy Spring.”

Irina graduated from the Faculty of Medicine at the I. P. Pavlov Ryazan State Medical University, continuing the family tradition. She completed a residency in internal medicine and worked as a freelance journalist for one of Ryazan’s magazines. She has been writing for children since 2011, when she began reading her first books to her son. She truly discovered contemporary children’s literature in all its diversity a year later, at a seminar in Konstantinovo (2012).

In 2013, her debut collection of children’s poems, Walk with a Ladybug, was published and became a Silver Laureate of the “Her Majesty the Book!” competition according to the ranking of the International Guild of