Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov, born in Vologda, Russia in 1907, was a Russian poet journalist and prose writer. He was arrested twice and spent fourteen years at Kolyma, a forced-labour camp in north eastern Siberia. When released in 1954, he started his most famous work, Kolyma Tales, a twenty-year project of short stories depicting life in a labour camp. Initially censored in Russia, his writing was translated and published abroad. He also wrote poetry for Soviet Magazines, much of which has been set to music. Shalamov died in 1982.