Hilary (Hilly) McCandless-Beard is a graduate student in Slavic Languages and Literatures. She earned her BA in Russian and Eurasian Studies from Colorado College in 2019. Her undergraduate research focused on traditional Russian rye bread and Soviet cuisine. Hilary is currently pursuing graduate studies both as an MA student at the Middlebury Language Schools Davis School of Russian (beginning summer 2019), and as a PhD student in the department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Virginia, where she teaches introductory Russian language. Her research interests include: twentieth-century literature; Soviet culture; Andrei Platonov; Mikhail Zoshchenko; food, hunger and famine in Russia and the Soviet Union.