Screenwriter

Svetlana Pavlova is a writer, winner of the annual Forbes "30 under 30" rating, and a graduate of the master's program "Literary Craft" at the Higher School of Economics. Her "not-thick novel" "Hunger" made it to the shortlist of the... "Yasnaya Polyana" award, and her new novel "Screenwriter" won the first prize of the "Lyceum" for young prose writers and poets. The novice screenwriter Zoya has never taken an HIV test. While waiting for the results, she makes a list - Yan, Andrey, Vitalik - and recalls romantic episodes from recent years. This book is about how today's 30-year-olds seek relationships, that these relationships are sometimes not a panacea for problems, about life in the grip of magical thinking, about the stigmatization of HIV, and the deep-rooted beliefs associated with it, about finding one's cause and the joy of true friendship. Love, unrequited love, happy underwear, unhappy dates, americano with cream, and faith that tomorrow a miracle will happen - and the one needed will come, while everything unnecessary will fall away and dissolve over time, in Moscow's winding streets, credits, and flickering frames. Sveta Pavlova is our Russian Bridget Jones or Carrie Bradshaw, who can see the good even in the most frightening situations and inspire us with that. (Ksenia Burzhskaya, writer) Sveta Pavlova has finely tuned writer's vision and hearing, and her main authorial method is thoughtful observation. Her characters speak naturally - like in life, and in each character, one can recognize our acquaintances. "Screenwriter" is a text where a complicated conversation about stigma meets with an ironic reflection on modern relationships, friendship, and love. (Yulia Vronskaya, Director of Development at the Peredelkino Creative House)