On June 27, 2025, Maria Kopieva, the writer and essayist known to readers as Alisa Danshoch, passed away after quietly battling illness in recent months. Friends and family gathered for a ceremony in the French town of Villefranche-sur-Mer for a service to celebrate her life on Wednesday, July 2.
Born into a distinguished Moscow family, Kopieva grew up in a home where books, music, and conversation were part of daily life. Her father was an editor and Turkish translator at Khudozhestvennaya Literatura, and her mother, an editor of a renowned music journal. Following her parents’ early divorce, she was raised by her grandparents, whose library would shape the writer she became.
A graduate of the Institute of Foreign Languages, Maria taught English and French at the Stroganov Academy and GITIS. However her calling emerged in the mid-1980s, when her first essays appeared in Ogonyok and Literaturnaya Gazeta. Close family members recall readers being drawn to her distinctive voice, which was “personal, graceful, and deeply humane.”
Her works — including Culinary Memories of a Happy Childhood, Not Quite a Holy Family from Serebryany Lane, Florence: A View from the Hill, and Case History — offered more than stories, they say. “They were reflections on love, memory, beauty and loss.”
“She wrote with a pencil. She chose her words as carefully as others select evening jewellery. Each detail deliberate, each phrase perfectly set,” a family member says. Beyond her books, she also dedicated efforts to improving cultural life. In 2008, she founded the Art-Line Foundation, which organized concerts, exhibitions, and events supporting young artists and enriching audiences in Russia and abroad.
She is survived by her husband, son, and grandchildren.
