Olga Martynova grew up in Leningrad, where she co-founded the poetry group »Kamera Chranenia« in the 1980s. In 1991 she moved to Germany with Oleg Jurjew (1959–2018). Since 1999 she has written literary texts in both Russian and German, and since 2018, only in German. Olga Martynova is a member of PEN and the German Academy for Language and Literature, as well as the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz. She is the recipient of, among other awards, the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize (2012) and the Berliner Literaturpreis (2015). Most recently, S. Fischer published Martynovas’ Gespräch über die Trauer (2023) and Such nach dem Namen des Windes: Gedichte (2024).

Olga Martynova is a resident at the Tarabya Cultural Academy from February 2025 to May 2025.