Oksana Marafioti

Oksana Marafioti (nee Kopylenko) is a writer.

Biography
A classically trained pianist, she graduated from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas' Professional Film Crew Training Program, and worked in film before moving into writing. She is the author of American Gypsy: A Memoir (FSG, 2012). Her works have appeared inSlate and Time, and Immigrant Voices Vol.II (Penguin Random House, 2015). She was the 2013 BMI - Library of Congress Kluge Center Fellow and the 2020 recipient of the Picador Guest Professorship Award from the University of Leipzig, Germany. Along with many interviews and panel appearances, Oksana has presented her research on Magical Realism In Soviet Russia at the Library of Congress in 2013 and participated in the C-SPAN panel discussion on race and ethnicity in 2015. In 2018, Oksana founded Lounge Writers, an online creative writing studio that offers classes by award-winning and best-selling authors to help writers of all levels explore and enhance their craft.