Would you briefly describe the support network that exists to enable Queer writers in Russia right now? (publications/ outlets/ etc)

        It's very easy to describe it briefly as far as it does not exist at all. Honestly, the almanach of gay writing RISK edited by me from 1995 to 2002 and so called "Thematic series" run by Kolonna Publications from 1997 to 2002 remain the only lasted for a while professional literary projects aimed in supporting and promoting Russian LGBT writing. Several other publications were not lasting (like, for instance, tiny but ambitious anthology of lesbian poetry "Le-lyu-li", 2008) while some publications were not professional enough (like "Ostrov" magazine for lesbian writing, pretty cozy but kind of old-fashioned). All in all, at the moment there is no special projects for Russian LGBT writing on paper, and the only online project, queerculture.ru, is barely alive.

        It does not mean that no LGBT writing is available to Russian reader. The same Kolonna Publications led by Dmitry Volchek, one of the most important Russian queer intellectuals, still operates and extensively publishes world queer literature in translation including many titles of, let's say, Herv? Guibert or Gerard Reve. More mainstream authors like Michael Cunningham are also available in Russian through more mainstream publishers. However, original Russian authors are barely involved in this process. First of all, they are simply not numerous enough (again, I speak only of high quality literature) to fill a magazine. With no general editions targeted at LGBT community (and that is definitely the result of oppression), there is no vacancy for gay columinsts or storywriters. As for queer poetry and poetic prose, they are welcome at several editions interested in innovative and transgressive writing of any kind, and there gay and lesbian issues easily neighbor with feminist poetry, overtly political poetry and poetry questioning discoursive frames of present society. Thus winning the most important Russian independent literary award, Andrey Bely Prize, by Aleksandr Ilyanen or appearance of Oksana Vasyakina among leading contenders for Arkady Dragomoshchenko Prize, the most important award for young authors, implies that queer writing functions as an integral part of actual independent antitotalitarian Russian literature.

        What challenges have indie presses and magazines publishing Queer lit faced in recent years? How do you imagine the literature itself responding to these challenges, if at all?

        In general, independent publishers and magazines (which means the circulations of up to 500, in exceptional cases up to 2000 copies, almost nothing for the country as large as Russia) are mostly out of the focus of attention for the authorities. There were several legislative moves towards exterminating them at all (for instance, by introducing special licences for publishing) but none of them have become a law up to the moment. So that the challenges are basically still the same as through the whole Putin era: highly corrupted economy (particularly, book trade is almost monopolized in Russia and effectively bans small and medium publishers from countrywide distribution), mostly intact Soviet system of higher education (with literature and culture of the latest half century practically uncovered even by philoligical faculties' curriculum; queer studies, naturally, are out of it as well), and so on. What is getting worse these years is the social atmosphere shaped now with the screechy screaming from the Kremlin: "No future!" It is difficult to insist that this nation still has its chance for the future, and apparently literature is here to find out how it is possible (and queer writing is here to remind that this future is queer).

        Recently the regime seems to be increasingly linking Queer identity with dissidence. Is Queer literature destined to become necessarily more political? Is the queer subject necessarily a revolutionary one?

        Generally this is not the case though in present conditions it seems so. Historically, the first Russian gay writer Mikhail Kuzmin (not related, in Russian our surnames have slightly different spellings) in early XXth century was seeking to legitimate his own private queerness and the queer feelings in his poetry and prose through appealing to Ancient or Renaissance role models rather than to the forthcoming dawn of the revolution (although his latest works of 1920-ies had lost this reasoning). The revival of Russian LGBT writing in the beginning of post-Soviet era invoked very different voices, some of them praised amenities of escapist lifestyle (aforementioned Aleksandr Ilyanen was brilliantly persuasive advocate of them), some tried to follow Kuzmin's dainty games with Antiquity (typically enough, the main proponent of the method, poet Aleksey Purin, ended up in 2010-ies with pretty dull religious lyrics), and the revolutionary subject of Yaroslav Mogutin's poetry, however queer, was coloured in suspicious Nietzschean proto-fascist tones. But now, true, Russian LGBT authors, especially representing the youngest generation, more or less unanimously lean left and get political, and one can speculate that this is a response to the political pressure. On the other hand, this is in line with the general switch from LGBT paradigm to Queer paradigm as far as the latter is challenging the deeper levels of the previous discoursive consensus (rethinking some earlier authors starting with Mikhail Kuzmin as harbingers of the queer paradigm is an essential part of this switch). Being queer means rejecting the preexistent set of identities including gay or lesbian identity, and this work of breaking loose from pre-defined frames is common for the most talented queer Russian authors in their 20-ies like Oksana Vasyakina, Galina Rymbu (available in English due to the translator Jonathan Platt), Dmitry Gerchikov and some others. Evidently, in their poetry not only gender issues or binary family are in question: the borders between being hero and being victim, between hope and despair, between following the rules and regulations of language and breaking them for freedom of expression are also persistently eroded by these authors.

        Is the social role of the author still a Brechtian form of witnessing? Or is a more active approach required (e.g kirill medvedev and his temporary refusal of poetry in lieu of more direct political action) ?

        I do not value so much any self-promotional campaigns in the field of poetry although the benefits Kirill Medvedev got from his blatant declarations are definitely much more noticeable than the consequences of his direct political actions. However, in his early poetry Medvedev proposed an impressive development of the crucially important tradition in Russian poetry of XX century based on the idea of witnessing as an active formative work. For Vsevolod Nekrasov since 1960-ies the task was to observe the flow of speech grasping the fragments not corrupted with totalitarian discourse. Medvedev on the edge of centuries witnessed that all the fragments of speech are somehow corrupted but we might see them as corrupted and somehow grasp the origin and direction of the corrupting power. Today leading Russian poets still see witnessing as a work with speech material rather than with, say, realities of life, and here among the most important figures I should name Lida Yusupova whose poetry is focused on queer topics since early 2000-ies but in recent years combines this focus with the switch towards documental poetry (something relatively new for Russian tradition, and it is not mere chance that Charles Reznikoff's "Holocaust" is published in 2016 in Russian translation). In her recent collection Yusupova writes poems based on Russian court papers (including the papers of probably the one and only Russian gay-hate murder trial) restoring absent voices and subjects of victims from the speeches of murderers, witnesses and judges, most of them unreliable and insincere. This experience seems extremely significant (and this book was awarded in 2016 with the emblematic "Razlichiye" Prize judged by the jury of 5 leading young poetry critics of the country).

        You recently emigrated to Latvia in protest of Putin's regime. In the future do you expect more queer voices to gravitate outside of Russian borders in the struggle for visibility?

        The numbers of recent Russian emigration (which is by default anti-Putin emigration) are rather high, and we know that there is a queer share in them though I wish Western democracies were more open for LGBT immigrants. However, not so many writers left Russian in these years. Emigration is not that cheap and simple (if it is not just escape in panic), especially for a Russian literary figure whose way of earning money is often connected with their language competence (while their knowledge of foreign languages is often far from being perfect). On the other hand, the possibility of Russian literary projects outside of Russia is not necessarily connected with emigration. For instance, one of the most comprehensible collections of, let me put it this way, gender aware Russian poetry appeared two years ago in Almaty, Kazakhstan, as a special issue of local literary newspaper "Yshsho odin", and some queer voices including probably the single Russian open transgender poet Friedrich Chernyshov are represented extensively in Ukrainian bilingual projects like Kyiv Poetry Week.

        In recent years, the state has run a successful propaganda campaign wedding russian national identity with that of strict heterosexual homogeny. To the state and the public, queerness is seen as a foreign export - a sort of ideological virus one is capable of contracting from overexposure to Western values. How can queer literature, here and abroad in Russia, hope to stem this rising tide of nationalism that excludes marginalised identities from its vision of the future.

        Russian national identity as constructed by current Russian propaganda is set free not only from any kind of gender challenge but also from questioning any worm-eaten "traditional values". It is not about oppression against some marginalised identities, it is about forbidding anybody from thinking and feeling without permission from the authorities. I believe that it is absolutely pointless in Russia to struggle for some rights for this or that relatively small group of people: due to many historical reasons Russian social life is not based on compassion. The clue to the public opinion is in the idea that suffering from homophobia teenager and his homophobic father, an underpaid worker, are victims of the same archaic antihuman politics, and that Western political, social and cultural models, however questionable they are, are the better choice for an archaic or intentionally retardated society than its homemade recipes. However, I would not overestimate the ability of present-day Russian literature to deliver this (or any other) message to more or less wide audience and thus impact directly and significantly on current social and political process. It does not work this way in the era of multimedia entertainment. So that our goal is to assist those who think in their thinking, help those who feel queer in their feeling, search and witness everything that's going on and preserve the results for the future that is, let me remind, inevitably queer.