Olga Sedakova was born in Moscow on December 26, 1949 to the family of a military engineer. She started school in Beijing, where her father was working at the time (1956-1957). Sedakova started writing poetry at an early age and decided quite early on to “be a poet.” In 1986 her first book came out with the Paris-based YMCA Press. Soon after this her poetry and essays began to be translated into European languages, published in various journals and anthologies and to appear in book form. Since 1991 she has taught in the Department of World Culture in the Philosophy Faculty at Moscow State University. And since 2004 she has been an active Fellow of the Institute of World Culture at the Library-Foundation for Russian-Language Literature Abroad. She is a Candidate of Philological Sciences (awarded for her dissertation, “Funereal Rites of the East and South Slavs,” 1983—published in book form in 2004); author of The Dictionary of Difficult Words in Church Services: Church Slavic and Russian Paronyms (2005); Doctor of Theology honoris causa (2003, Minsk European Humanities University); Officier d’honneur d’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de la République Française (2012).
奧爾嘉 · 謝達科娃於1949年12月26日出生在莫斯科的一個軍工工程師家庭。她在北京開始上學，那時她的父親在當地工作（1956–1957）。謝達科娃從小就開始寫詩，並很早就決定“成為一名詩人”。1986年，她的第一本詩集由巴黎的基督教青年會出版社出版。此後不久，她的詩歌和散文開始被翻譯成歐洲多種語言，並在各種期刊和選集中出版。自1991年以來，她一直在莫斯科大學哲學院世界文化系任教。從2004年開始，她一直是俄羅斯海外文學圖書館基金會世界文化研究所的活躍研究員。2012年，她獲得法國藝術與文學勳章。