Novella Matveeva is a wonderful Russian poet, bard, playwright, and literary critic. Her poetry organically combines lyricism and romantic temperament, inexhaustible imagination and craving for the exotic, sadness about imperfections and injustices in our lives. Evgeny Yevtushenko compares Matveeva’s poetry with Alexander Green’s ship under scarlet sails, and calls Novella herself Assolya with a magical voice.