"Everything I do is derivation of verse..." are two hypostases of the author: poetic and prosaic. Her prose possesses a special laconicity, which is also achieved through the experience of the poetic image, more concentrated, denser in meaning. Elena Skulskaya thinks in metaphors, which have a surprising exactitude: "The trees with branches raised for alms," "the eyes-birds have opened wide the beaks of the pupils." It is prose, as evocative as poetry.
In the space of the narrative she knows how to find the exact point, from which the reader best sees that frightening, or funny, or recondite, or desperate side that life brings to the fortunes of the protagonists (Paolo Galvagni).
Elena Skulskaya was born in 1950 in Tallinn, where she still lives. She graduated in Humanities from the University of Tartu. She began publishing in 1968 (collective poetry volume Znakomstvo [Knowledge]). Her first poetry collection was in 1978: Glava dvadcat' šestaja [Chapter Twenty-six]. Then several volumes of poems, prose, and essays came out. His plays have been staged at the Russian Theater of Estonia. He has won various awards: the Estonian Monthly "KesKus" award (1999), the Estonian Writers' Union award (2006), the Estonian Journalists' Union "Hea sõna" award (2011), the Russian Booker award (2014).