Oksana Marafioti, a Romani from her father’s side and an Armenian from her mother‘s one, was born in Latvia. In addition to her writing and music, she teaches creative writing at several American universities. She spent her childhood partly in Moscow and partly on tour with her grandfather Andrei Kopylenko's theatre troupe, with whom she also performed as a dancer and singer. At the age of fifteen, she fled the USSR along with her parents and younger sister and the family resettled in Los Angeles, where she attended the Magnet Academy for exceptionally gifted children and studied classical piano.
She made her debut with the autobiographical novel American Gypsy in 2012 (Žij tam, kde jsou písně, Triton 2018). In 2018, using a penname Ana Mara, she published the fantasy Donatti’s Lunatics, inspired by her family’s gift of fortune telling. She has contributed to a number of short story collections, including The Perpetual Engine of Hope (2010), dedicated to her hometown of Las Vegas.
Photo: the author's private archive
