Maria Rybakova was born in Moscow. She studied Ancient Greek and Latin in Berlin and at Yale (where she earned a PhD), often participating in archeological excavations. She completed her first novel, Anna Grom and her Ghost, at the age of 24. The novel was subsequently translated into German and Spanish. Several shorter novellas and stories followed, one of which won the Sergei Dovlatov Award for the best short story published in 2003. Meanwhile, to support herself, she taught in Northeast China and in the Mekong River region in Thailand. In 2004 her second novel, Losers' Brotherhood, was published in Russian, and is soon to appear in French (Editions du Seuil). She also taught for a semester a class on Borges, one of her favorite writers, with the Bard Prison Initiative. In Spring 2005 she taught another Capstone Course, entitled "Word and Nationality: Tolerance in Post-Soviet Literature."