Is an award-winning writer, comedian, playwright and broadcaster. After studying French and Russian at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge, she became a journalist working on the Guardian, Observer and Financial Times. Now the author of seven non-fiction books, her latest is One Ukrainian Summer (Bonnier, 2024), a memoir about Russia and Ukraine in the 1990s. She has had seven radio plays produced for BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio 4. As a comedian she performed six years of sell-out shows at the Edinburgh Festival and is the host of the hit podcast How to Own the Room (2 million downloads), featuring women from Hillary Clinton to Margaret Atwood talking about their experiences with performance and public speaking. She has spent time in Kyiv, Odesa and Yalta and has lived in Moscow and St Petersburg.