Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) grew up and was educated in Kiev. He practiced medicine but soon turned to journalism and writing. He struggled persistently for artistic freedom but was frustrated by the Soviet censorship. "In the last seven years," he wrote to a friend in 1937, "I have created sixteen works in various genres, and they have all been slain." Margarita Marinova is associate professor of English at Christopher Newport University. She is the author of Transnational Russian-American Travel Writing (2011) and has published essays in Studies in Travel Writing, Slavic and East European Journal, and Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature. Scott Pollard is professor of English at Christopher Newport University. He is the coeditor, with Kara Keeling, of Food in Children's Literature: Critical Approaches. His research and teaching interests include world literature, Latin American literature, Middle Eastern literature, and food studies.