Elena Bulatova was born in Baku in the family of a teacher and a doctor. After graduating from the Moscow Petroleum Institute, she worked at a research institute and defended her Ph.D. thesis. Elena has four children and three grandchildren. She currently lives in San Jose, California, USA. Elena began writing poetry in 2000: “The beginning coincides with the beginning of the millennium, the end is ahead.” She is interested in painting; her drawings from the “Self-Portraits” series are used in the design of this collection. The cycle of poems “The Hermitage of Memory” includes selected works from 2000 to 2011.