Keren Pevzner

From 2008, Keren writes the "Culinary commentary" column on Booknik, the Web resource and publication in Russian on Jewish literature and culture.

Keren's first work of fiction was a crime story, The Murderer's Confession. It was written in 1999 and was published the same year in The Iskatel Magazine [ru].

Keren Pevzner's first published book (1997, Miry Publishing Company) was The Parallel Ulpan, a Hebrew self-teaching guide in two volumes. She wrote it for two years on the suggestion from the writer Daniel Kluger who has attended her course. This book effectively carved out a niche of textbooks for self-teaching written in plain language for Russian-speaking repatriates (afterward, as well as for Hebrew self-study in Diaspora, for example in Russia and in Canada), and ever since it went through eleven editions at least.

Keren repatriated to Israel in 1990, together with her second husband and her eldest son. She tried her hand at a great number of trades from a kibbutz worker and grocery store owner to Hebrew language teaching and employment with the Ministry of Absorption Israel. Currently, she resides in Ashkelon, and as her primary occupation engages in teaching at the Сollege of Computer science for public jobholders in Israel. Additionally, Keren busies herself with educational literature writing and publishing.

Keren Pevzner (Hebrew: ‏קרן פבזנר‏‎, née Kira Gennadievna Konovalova; born May 8, 1961 in Baku, Azerbaijan SSR) who also goes by the pen name Katerina Vrublevskaya as vintage crime fictions author, is an Israeli novel and essay writer, Hebrew and computer science teacher, translator, author of a number of textbooks, cookbooks, and encyclopedias, and blogger. In the past, she was the Coordinator in the Ministry of Aliyah and Integration, as well as in the Social and Economic Development Program [he] in Israel.

Kira Konovalova was born on May 8, 1961, in Baku. She comes from an old family of Bakuvian oil engineers. Her great grandfathers were European specialists (the Jews and the Germans) who participated in the conducted by Branobel Caspian oil-field development, at the invitation of Zeynalabdin Taghiyev. One of them, Johann (Ivan Aleksandrovich) Maderwax worked together with a German mining engineer Gustav Wilhelm Richard Sorge, the father of renowned soviet spy Richard Sorge. Later, he took a job with the Caspian Steamship Company. In 1938, he fell victim of the Great Purge (Stalinists repressions) and was executed.