Natalya Gorbanevskaya was born in Moscow in 1936. Expelled from Moscow University, she graduated from the Philology Department of Leningrad University. She was arrrested in 1968 for protesting against the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. Gorbanevskaya now lives in Paris, where until 2001 she worked for the Russian émigré newspaper Russkaya mysl. She has published a number of poetry collections in Europe and the USA since leaving Russia.