Sarah Carlson asked Sofiya Pasternack:

I'm so fascinated by the setting for Anya Kozlova and the Dragon. What kind of research did you have to do to capture the setting and cultures?

Sofiya Pasternack Thank you! The setting was a ton of fun to create, but also pretty challenging. I wanted to stay true to the folkloric piece of the story, so the research was largely centered on the folklore and the byliny (oral epic poems) used as the basis for the story. The byliny span a couple (seven??) centuries, so picking a single time period was tough.

I went with the earliest setting because of the mythic heroes' relationship with Vladimir I of Kiev (ruled in the late 10th-early 11th Centuries), as well as Sviatoslav I (Vladimir's dad) and his conquest of Khazaria (mid-10th Century).

For culture, I patterned the Russian and Jewish cultures after modern cultures of each. I didn't want to take this to too much of a historical place, so I kept the dialogue relatively modern, too.

flag