Disappearing Earth

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book would not exist without the hospitality, generosity, and guidance of the people of Kamchatka. I am especially grateful to Tatyana Oborskaya for bringing me to Kamchatka, Denis Piculin for taking care of me, and Anastasia Streltsova for being my friend. Thanks to the United States Fulbright program and Kamchatka State University for supporting my 2011–2012 research year. During that time, the collectives at the Beringia and the Kronotsky Reserve offered invaluable help and insight. My 2015 trip back happened thanks to Elena Lepo, Aiva Lāce, Lilia Banakanova, Martha Madsen, Bystrinsky Nature Park, OOO Olenevod, and Esso’s Herd 4. Meeting these people and seeing these places changed my life.

Disappearing Earth was inspired by Russia and written in America. My thanks go to Alizah Salario, Claire Dunnington, Boo Trundle, Brittany K. Allen, Leigh Stein, Alison B. Hart, Mira Jacob and the Resistance, Jennie Baird, Mika Yamamoto, and Lena Tsykynovska for reading and believing in this novel. The space and support to write it came from Brooklyn’s PowderKeg workspace, Chinelo Okparanta and the Tin House Summer Workshop, Christine Schutt and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Dionne Brand and the Banff Centre, VCCA, Hambidge, Ragdale, and Yaddo.

Thanks to Jean Kwok for being a guardian angel. Suzanne Gluck, Tracy Fisher, Andrea Blatt, and the whole WME team have given me the happiest moments of my whole life. Rowan Cope and Jo Dickinson at Scribner UK nurtured this book’s growth from across the Atlantic—I am so thankful. At Knopf, Annie Bishai, Lydia Buechler, Pei Loi Koay, Josie Kals, Kathy Zuckerman, Sara Eagle, Rachel Fershleiser, Paul Bogaards, Nicholas Latimer, and Chris Gillespie guided me through every step of the publishing process and made my dreams come true. And enormous thanks go to my brilliant, kind, unfailingly patient editor, Robin Desser. There aren’t words in English or Russian that can express what she has meant to this book and to me.

So many people helped bring Disappearing Earth to life. I will never be able to thank them all sufficiently. Let me then dedicate this last line of gratitude to the most important one: to Alex Eleftherakis, for his love, his faith, and his suggestion ten years ago to consider Kamchatka.