Val Votrin is a Belgian writer of Russian origin writing in English and Russian. Votrin was born in 1974 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan (then a Soviet republic). He holds a BA in English Literature from Tashkent State University and a MSc in Human Ecology and a PhD in Environmental Science from Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He moved to Belgium in 2000 and became Belgian national in 2007. Votrin has published his short stories and novels since 1995. In 2009, his novel The Last Magog was shortlisted for the Andrei Bely Prize, the oldest independent literary prize in Russia. Another novel, The Speech Therapist was nominated for a string of literary awards, including the Russian Booker Prize, the Big Book Prize and the Alexander Piatigorsky Prize. Votrin writes in a variety of genres, including magical realism, speculative fiction, dystopia and fantasy. His most recent Russian book, The Compiler of Bestiaries, a collection of short stories written between 2007 and 2018, was published in September 2021 in St Petersburg. He currently lives in Amsterdam.