Alexandra Popoff was born and educated in Moscow. A journalist and writer, she published her work in the Russian national newspaper and magazines. As an Alfred Friendly Press Fellow in 1991, she wrote for the Philadelphia Inquirer. After marrying a Canadian journalist in 1992, she settled in Saskatchewan, which is where the Russian Doukhobors, her husband’s ancestors, had originally migrated and settled. Tolstoy, who shared their pacifism, had sponsored their migration at the end of the nineteenth century. Popoff lives in Canada. She earned postgraduate degrees in literature in Moscow, Toronto, and Saskatchewan.