Biography

Born and raised in California, Paul Richardson attended Central College and did graduate work at Indiana University, Bloomington. He was bitten by the Russian bug in 1981, in St. Petersburg, soon after swapping his tattered down jacket for a black marketeer’s fur hat.

In 1989 and 1990, after several years of intensive language study and graduate work in Russian area studies, he finagled a position as head of one of the first Soviet-Western joint ventures in Moscow. Since then, he has traveled back and forth to Russia dozens of times from his home base in Vermont, where he founded RIS Publications in 1990.

In his day job, Richardson is publisher of Russian Life, a bimonthly magazine on Russian culture, history, travel and life. The company also publishes books, maps, calendars, a literary journal, websites (e.g. Vodkaphiles), and is active on Facebook and Twitter.

In his spare time, he enjoys running, reading, eating, music, writing, travel, ukelele-strumming, and drinking coffee.

A few years ago, Richardson’s passion for running morphed into the book, Running is Flying, an illustrated collection of aphorisms and thoughts on the running life. It will be published by Rodale in February 2012.

He has also written three novels, one of which, Russian Rules, has been published. Back in the twentieth century, Richardson authored the decidedly more mundane Russia Business Survival Guide (7 editions), and he has since edited several works of fiction and non-fiction related to Russia. He has also written and translated dozens of articles on Russian history and culture (some of which are posted on this site).