We invite you to an evening with Maria Stepanova, who will discuss her book The Disappearing Act in conversation with her translator Sasha Dugdale.

A writer, M, lives in exile after her country invades its neighbour. She is severed from her former life and her future, and carries a burden of shame. Finding herself stranded in an unfamiliar town after an unfortunate series of events, M is presented with an opportunity – to be forgotten, to reinvent herself, or maybe even to vanish altogether.

The Disappearing Act is a profound reflection on self and agency during times of war and displacement, told through a dreamlike narrative that slips from reality into the unknown. Stepanova plays with the conventions of autofiction and fiction to explore the power of literature at a time when language itself is abused, the experience of an artist cut off from their home, and the (im)possibility of transformation.

Maria Stepanova is one of Russia’s foremost writers; The Disappearing Act is a significant work of fiction written in the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine, and joins a long tradition of writing by Russian emigres. The original book, Фокус, was published to acclaim in 2024 by new tamizdat publisher Hyperboreus, and has been a consistent bestseller in Russian-language bookshops in exile, including the Pushkin House Bookshop. 

Maria Stepanova is a renowned poet, essayist, and journalist, with ten poetry collections and three books of essays to her name. Stepanova’s work has earned numerous Russian and international honours, including the Andrei Bely Prize and the Joseph Brodsky Fellowship. Her novel In Memory of Memory won the Bolshaya Kniga Award in 2018 and was shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize, and the 2022 Pushkin House Book Prize. In 2021, Bloodaxe published her poetry collection War of the Beasts and the Animals in Sasha Dugdale’s translation, selected as the Poetry Book Society Translation Choice in Spring 2021. Her most recent book to be translated into English by Sasha Dugdale is The Disappearing Act (Fitzcarraldo Editions, February 2026).

Sasha Dugdale is a poet and translator. She has published six books of poetry with Carcanet, most recently: Deformations (2020), which was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot and Derek Walcott Prizes and The Strongbox (2024), which won the Anglo-Hellenic League Runciman Award and was shortlisted for the London Hellenic Award. Her long poem ‘Joy’ was awarded a Forward Prize for Best Single Poem in 2016. Her translations have won PEN Awards and been shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, the James Tait Black Prize and Warwick Prize for Women’s Writing amongst others. Her translation of Maria Stepanova’s In Memory of Memory won the MLA Lois Roth Award and was shortlisted for the Pushkin House Book Prize 2022. Dugdale’s translations of new writing for theatre have been widely produced, including stagings by the Royal Court Theatre in London, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Public Theater in New York. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and former editor of the international magazine Modern Poetry in Translation.

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