Mikhail Kuzmin : A Life in Art

Mikhail Kuzmin (1872-1936), Russia's first openly gay writer, stood at the epicentre of the turbulent cultural and social life of Petersburg-Petrograd-Leningrad for over three decades.

He wrote both poetry and prose, was a playwright, critic, translator, and composer who was associated with every aspect of modernism's history in Russia, from Symbolism to the Lenigrad avant-gardes of the 1920s.This biography is based largely on Kuzmin's private papers and diary, and places him in the context of his society and times, and contributes to the discovery and appreciation of an interesting period in Russia's long suppressed gay history.