Alina Simone

Alina Simone was born in Kharkov, Ukraine and came to the United States as the daughter of political refugees after her father refused recruitment by the KGB and was blacklisted for 'refusal to cooperate.' Raised in the suburbs of Massachusetts, Alina moved to Austin, Texas after graduating from art school in Boston. It was there that she first started singing in public, in the doorway of an abandoned bar on Sixth Street. Simone quickly gained critical acclaim from outlets such as NPR, Pitchfork, Spin Magazine and The New Yorker for her sparse instrumentation and raw and powerful delivery. In 2010, Simone was among twenty musicians worldwide to be nominated for the prestigious Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. Simone's first collection of personal essays, 'You Must Go and Win,' will be published by Faber and Faber in June 2011. Best-selling author Neil Gaiman describes You Must Go and Win as "music, religion, Russia and family conjured and dissected with warm humor and sharp eyes" and novelist John Wray calls it, " a twenty-first century Portrait of the Artist, warts and all... a delight and, in all honesty, an inspiration." Simone has also published in the New York Times Magazine, McSweeney's online and Museyon's Music and Travel guidebook.