Helena Kernan holds MA degrees in Slavic Studies from the University of Cambridge and UC Berkeley, and works as a literary translator, writer and researcher. Originally from the UK, she has lived in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kyiv and Berlin, where she worked with the State Hermitage Museum, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, the Theatre of Displaced People, and the Ukrainian Centre for Civil Liberties. She has spent time in Perm, Russia, volunteering for the human rights organisation Memorial, and has worked on several international projects focused on historical memory, documentation, and witness.

Her translation work is rooted in contemporary feminist poetry in the Russophone world, and in 2020 she was chosen as the inaugural Translator of Contemporary Russian Poetry in Residence by Pushkin House and Oxford University.