I was born in 1976, in Riga, Latvia. My parents encouraged personal responsibility to such an extent that, at the age of thirteen, I transferred myself to another school and informed them of this only post factum. The Pushkin Lyceum was an experiment in bombarding kids with a Victorian curriculum of humanities (Latin, ethics, psychology and linguistics in 9th grade) just to see what happens. What happened was, first of all, a terrible female-to-male ratio. In 1990, I started writing for Soviet Youth, a daily newspaper that had just discovered bikini photos and UFO canards, and was enjoying a circulation of over two million as a result. My first byline was an interview with a fashionable novelist, who did not expect to be interrogated by a 13-year-old and dropped his guard to say some unflattering things about the Communist Party. Next year, the Soviet Union collapsed, no doubt under the weight of that interview; within months, my parents were getting harassed on the street (as Jews, by Russians) and on the job (as Russians, by Latvians). In 1992, we moved to the U.S.

After two years in Cleveland, I took up film studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and moved to NYC within two weeks of graduation. There followed an extended spell of job-hopping. From 1998 to 2006, I wrote music listings for the Village Voice and reviews for Pitchfork, bluffed my way through a very brief career as a food critic, produced news at NBC, edited a Russian glossy, and dabbled in cafe ownership, before finally joining New York Magazine as a contributing editor. I have since won three National Magazine Awards for my work at New York, two in the Leisure Interest category (for this and this) and one in Personal Service (for this).

My first novel, Ground Up, is out now from Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Its Russian translation, by me and Lily Idov, was published in Moscow in October 2009. I am also working on a book about unsung icons of Soviet design for Rizzoli; it should be out in early 2011. In literary matters, I am lucky to be represented by Amanda "Binky" Urban at ICM. Last but absolutely not least, I write songs.