Elena Kostioukovitch is a scholar, literary translator, essayist; visiting professor at several Italian universities; from 1988, she resides in Milan, Italy.

Background and academic achievements: she graduated from Moscow State University (Italian Studies). From 1980 to 1988,  literary consultant for Sovremennaja Khudozhestvennaja Literatura za Rubezhom (Contemporary   Foreign Fiction) magazine, Moscow. From 1988 to 1991, full-time research scholar at the Department of World Literature, USSR Academy of Sciences. From 1989 to 1995, visiting professor at Trento University, Italy. Then visiting professor at the University of Trieste (1991, 1992), Pavia University (1995) and State University of Milan (2000 to 2009), visiting course at Ca’Foscari (Venice, 2014), public readings at the University of Tokyo (2014), at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (2014) and at the Kobe University (2014).

Awards: BEST TRANSLATION OF THE YEAR (1988, Moscow, Russia), ZOIL Literary Award (1999, Moscow, Russia), GRINZANE CAVOUR MOSCA Literary Prize (2004, Italy), BANCARELLA (cucina) Award (2007, Italy), CHIAVARI Literary Prize (2007, Italy), NATIONAL AWARD FOR TRANSLATION (2007, Italy), AWARD FOR INTERCULTURAL APPROACH (2011, Italy), GOGOL Prize (Rome 2012).

Books: Why Italians Love to Talk about Food (Italian edition: Milan, Sperling and Kupfer, 2006; Russian Edition: Moscow, EKSMO, 2006; Serbian edition: Paidea, 2007; American edition: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009). The book has been published in 18 countries.
Her long novel Zwinger was published in Russia in 2013 (Corpus Publishing House, and in Italia, translated by the Author herself, in 2014, with the title Sette notti, Bompiani Publishing House, 2014

Main translated works: Umberto Eco’s renowned bestsellers The Name of the Rose, Foucault’s Pendulum, The Island of the Day Before, Baudolino (ranked as one of the top translator's works by OZON Online Bookstore for four months, Fall 2003), The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana; Umberto Eco’s non-fiction books Five Moral Essays, How to Write a Dissertation. She translated also Emanuele Tesauro’s Through the Lens of Aristotle (the only complete foreign language edition).

Edited works: Contemporary Russian Authors selected by Elena Kostioukovitch  (Bompiani, 1990, several reprints), The Roots of Russian Art by Dmitry Likhachev ( Fabbri, 1991: several reprints, rights sold to Germany and Japan), Five Centuries of European Drawings (Leonardo Arte, 1995), Treasures of Troy (Leonardo Arte, 1996, published in Italy and Russia), The St.Petersburg Muraqqa (Leonardo Arte, 1996, published in Italy and Russia); Jewish Stories and Fairy Tales (Bompiani, 2002); Nina’s Diary by Nina Lugovskaya (Frassinelli, Milan, and worldwide editions).

Contribution to periodicals Itoghi (Moscow), Ezhenedel’nyj Zhurnal (Moscow), Novaja Model (Moscow), L’Espresso (Italy), Panorama (Italy).

Literary Agency: Elena is the founder and chief executive of ELKOST Literary Agency, which represents prominent Russian authors worldwide (www.elkost.com)