Mikhail Viesel

Mikhail Viesel

Born 20 July 1970, Moscow, Russia.

1987-1992: Studied at the Moscow Institute of Chemical Engineering; degree in mechanical engineering.

1993-1998: Studied at the Gorky Institute of Literature in Moscow; degree in literary translations.

1996- present: freelance cultural critic and essayist, writing for leading Moscow publications (see below).

1998-2002: part-time post-graduate student at Gorky Institute of Literature, writing a dissertation about Italo Calvino and literary hypertext.

1999-2002, 2003-2004: staff editor for Moscow's leading online newspaper, Lenta.ru (http://www.lenta.ru), responsible for
- searching out relevant news items and keeping track of developing stories
- reformatting, writing and editing stories according to online newspaper format
- developing hypertext apparatus, converting text into hypertext using HTML, FTP clients, graphics processors.
- collaborating with the site's information affiliates

2003: Script writer for two weekly 30-min shows for channel "Rambler-TV": "Music of the planet" and "Music and Internet".

2004: Staff editor for pop-science magazine "GeoFocus"

2004 - 2006: PR-director for Fundamental Digital Library "Russian Literature and Folklore"
2004 - 2007: staff editor (books reviewer) for Time Out Moscow
2007 - 2011: staff editor for "Inostranka/CoLibri publishers" ("Atticus Publishing house")
2009 - present: Lecturer for creative writing courses at CINEMOTION

Important Publications

"Calvino's Later Works as Examples of Hypertext," Setevaya Slovestnost' (Net Belles Lettres) (http://www.litera.ru/slova/) Moscow: November, 1998
French translation: Les derniers romans d'Italo Calvino comme hypertextes (http://hypermedia.univ-paris8.fr/Groupe/documents/Calvino.htm)

"Hypertexts on Both Sides of the Computer Screen," Inostrannaya Literatura (Foreign Literature), Moscow: October, 1999.

"The Ancestors of Postmodernism: Calvino's Trilogy," Russky Zhurnal (Russian Journal, http://www.russ.ru), Moscow: April, 2000

"E-pistolary Novel," Russky Zhurnal (Russian Journal), Moscow: April, 2001

"Twelve Plots in Search of a Reader: Calvino's 'If on a Winter's Night a Traveller…'" Vestnik Molodykh Uchenykh (Journal of Young Scientists: Philological Series,) Vol. 6'01, St. Petersburg: 2001

"Literary Games on the Internet," Novy Mir (New World), Moscow: April, 2002

Literary Translations (all - from Italian)

Novyie Veruyuschie - Giacomo Leopardi's poem I Nuovi Credenti. Moscow, Respublika: November 2000
Vsio ravno tebe vodit' - Giuseppe Culicchia's novel Tutti giu' per terra. Moscow, Pangloss: 2002, San-Petersburg, Symposium: 2004
Amabarabá - Giuseppe Chulicchia's novel (in work)
Micellaneous:
Fluent in English and Italian
Created hypertext literary project "Le città invisibili on-line" (http://calvino.viesel.ru) (2002)
Wrote the 240-pages guide for New York (Moscow: Afisha, 2003)
Spent May-December 2002 in New York for family reasons
Accomplishments:
Winner of the on-line literary contest "Art-Teneta 2000" (translation category)