Sophia Shalmiyev
Leningrad
Sophia Shalmiyev is a writer and painter who lives in Portland with her two children.
- 1980s Leningrad, New York, then Portland
- Memoir Mother Winter, Simon & Schuster
- A Kirkus starred review
- Miller Foundation Spark Award, 2025
- MFA, Portland State University
“I love America. It's broken, like me.”
She grew up in 1980s Leningrad, the daughter of a Russian mother and an Azerbaijani father. At eleven her father took her to America, leaving her mother behind; they landed in New York in 1990. She holds an MFA in writing from Portland State University and a second master's in creative arts therapy from the School of Visual Arts.
Her memoir Mother Winter (Simon & Schuster, 2019) follows her flight from the Soviet Union, the search for her mother and her own motherhood; Kirkus gave it a starred review, and Eileen Myles called it "vividly awesome and truly great." Her writing has appeared in The Believer, Tin House, Literary Hub, Guernica and LARB. In 2025 she received a Miller Foundation Spark Award.
She has finished her first novel, I Married The Butcher To Get To The Bone, and is at work on a second. She has taught creative writing at PSU and PNCA.
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