Vitali Vitaliev

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Vitali Vitaliev (Виталий Витальев) is a Ukrainian-born journalist and writer who has worked in Russia, the UK, Australia and Ireland.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Vitaliev was born in 1954 in Kharkov, Ukraine. He graduated from Kharkov University in French and English, working as an interpreter and translator before becoming a journalist in 1981. He worked as a special correspondent for Krokodil magazine in Moscow when he appeared as Clive James' 'Moscow Correspondent' on Saturday Night Clive. On 31 January 1990 he and his family 'defected', moving first to London, then taking up residence (and citizenship) in Australia. After a few years there he moved back to the UK, living in London. He is now back in London again after spending some time in Edinburgh and Dublin.

[edit] Career

[edit] Journalism

Vitaliev's journalism work in the former Soviet Union included stories and essays for Ogonyok, Literaturnaya Gazeta and Nedelya as well as Krokodil, earning him the Golden Calf Literary Award, five annual Krokodil Awards, the Journalist of the Year Honorary Diploma for 1987 and the 1989 Ilf and Petrov Prize for Satirical Journalism.

He has written for newspapers in Australia, such as The Age; and for the Irish magazine Village. In the UK he was written for Punch, The Guardian, The Spectator, The European, The Herald, Russian London Courier and The Daily Telegraph. In 2006-07 he worked as Editor-at-Large of Entrepreneur magazine, UK, and at present is Features Editor of E&T magazine.

[edit] Television

Vitaliev has written and presented several television documentaries for Channel 4, ABC and the BBC, including Tasmania, Moscow Central, Vitali's Australia, My Friend Little Ben (in BBC1's Byline series, 1990) and The Train To Freedom – a programme in the series Travels With My Camera (Channel 4, 1994). He has been a guest on After Dark and Have I Got News for You for the BBC, and for almost 3 years appeared regularly in Europe Direct, BBC World's magazine programme on weekday evenings. His appearances on BBC Radio 4 include Breakaway, Excess Baggage and his own series "Eye on the East". In 2007, he was a researcher and script-writer for the BBC2 comedy quiz TV show QI.

[edit] Awards

In the West, Vitaliev has won several literary and journalistic awards, including The Royal Melbourne Show Journalism Award (First Prize) in Australia, RTS Award for the best TV entertainment Show of 2007 (as part of the QI team) in the UK and was appointed Nieman Fellow in Journalism (Harvard University, USA) in 1990.

[edit] Bibilography

[edit] First editions

  • 1987 King of the Bar Pravda Publishers. A collection of articles written for Krokodil magazine (in Russian).
  • 1990 Special Correspondent – Investigating in the Soviet Union, Hutchinson, ISBN 0-09-174297-8; translated into German, French & Japanese
  • 1991 Dateline Freedom – Revelations of an Unwilling Exile, Hutchinson, ISBN 0-09-174677-9.
  • 1991 Vitali's Australia, Random House, ISBN 0-09-182554-7
  • 1993 The Third Trinity (with Derek Kartun), Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN 0-340-55366-9; Seven editions in Germany
  • 1995 Little is the Light- Nostalgic Travels in the Mini-states of Europe, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0-671-71925-4
  • 1997 Dreams on Hitler's Couch, RC Books, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 1-86066-088-6
  • 1999 Borders Up! Eastern Europe Through the Bottom of a Glass, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0-684-81810-8

[edit] Anthologies

  • Granta 64, Winter 1998 Russia, The Last Eighteen Drops (15 pages).
  • QI Annual, Faber & Faber, 2007. In collaboration.
  • The Best of Ogonyok. The New Journalism of Glasnost. William Heinemann, 1990. Two stories.
  • The New Soviet Journalism: The Best of Soviet Weekly Ogonyok, Beacon Pr, 1991, Two stories.
  • The Penguin Book of Fights, Feuds & Heartfelt Hatreds. An Anthology of Antipathy. Hardcover: Viking, 1992. Paperback: Penguin Books Ltd, 1993. One story
  • Central Asia: Threats, Attacks, Arrests & Harassment of Human Rights Defenders. One of three authors/editors. Front Line, 2006

[edit] Books to be published

  • Vitali's Ireland. Time Travels in the Celtic Tiger Land, Gill & Macmillan, 2008
  • Passport to Enclavia. Travels in Search of a European Identity, Reportage Press
  • Life as a Literary Device, Beautiful Books, 2009

[edit] Quotes

“ A 19th century Russian literary critic, Vissarion Belinsky, once remarked that to write a good book about Russia, one had to leave it first. I think this can be applied not just to Russia, but to any place one had felt attached to before having to leave it. ”
“ I have left London again – for the umpteenth time – despite my friends' advice to the contrary. Again, I have ignored Sydney Smith's pronouncement that any life led out of London is a mistake – bigger or smaller, but still a mistake. I know it is, but keep leaving London, walking out on it like on an unfaithful woman, whom I still love, only to miss it (her?) almost to tears and then – against all odds – to come back again. London as a state of mind) ”
“ You can change wallpaper and rearrange furniture in the house of your childhood, but you can never alter the view from its window. ”

[edit] External links