Born in the former USSR, to a Russian/Ukrainian mother and Cuban father, Anna Lidia settled definitively in Havana, Cuba, in 1989. Originally a visual artist, in 1997 she won the Premio David for her first short-story collection, Bad Painting. She has become a recognised figure in the Cuban literary scene, with eight short-story collections, three books of poetry and two novels, participating in literary events throughout Europe and the Americas. Through both her words and her painting, her work is noteworthy for its very personal reflection of daily life, grindingly yet magically real, as experienced in present-day Cuba. Many of her short stories have appeared in English, in publications such as American Chordata, Exchanges, Guernica, Two Lines, Words Without Borders and Your Impossible Voice. In 2019, she completed a tour of US universities, speaking about her creative process, as well as about race and gender in Cuba.

“A journey to the Soviet Union, around, it, and back to Cuba in the 1980s that isfraught with disunion and sorrow, but also joy and desire.” -- Jacqueline Loss, Dreaming in Russian

“Vega Serova’s fiction reads like a gallery of antiheronies.” -- Mabel Cuesta, Cambridge History of Cuban Literature

“Her writing is seductive. Sometimes it provokes tenderness and sometimes pain. A novel of harsh beauty, it gets under your skin.” -- Karla Suárez, author of Havana Year Zero