Michael Idov

I was born in Riga, Latvia (then a part of the U.S.S.R.), and moved to the U.S. with my family in 1992 at the age of 16. I studied film at the University of Michigan, which led to writing movie reviews, which led to over ten years in New York journalism before my first book came out in 2009. At various points of my life, I co-owned a failing coffee house (which formed the basis of that first book, Ground Up), sang in an indie rock band, and worked as the editor-in-chief of GQ Russia. I am currently based in Berlin, though I'm almost never actually there, and split my time between writing books in English (of which Dressed Up for a Riot is the latest) and films and TV series in Russian.