Elena Fanailova is the author of eight books of poetry. Her poems have been translated into ten languages; in English translation they have been anthologized in Contemporary Russian Poetry (Dalkey Archive, 2008), The Anthology of Contemporary Russian Women Poets (University of Iowa Press, 2005), and Crossing Centuries: the New Generation of Russian Poetry (Talisman House, 2000). She has received the Andrei Bely Award (1999), the Moscow Score Award (2003), and the Znamya award (2008).

In 2013, she was awarded a fellowship in Rome by Joseph Brodsky Memorial Fund. A book in Italian translation, Lena and the People, was published in Rome in 2015, translated and edited by Claudia Skandura. The Russian Version (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2009/2019), her first book in English translation, received the 2010 Best Translated Book Award from Three Percent. Born in Voronezh, in central Russia, Fanailova majored in linguistics at Voronezh State University and studied medicine at the Voronezh Medical Institute. She has worked as a doctor, a university professor, and a journalist.

At Radio Liberty, Fanailova was the host of the radio program Far from Moscow where she covered a broad range of topics, from the Beslan siege to new Russian prose. In recent years, her journalism has been focused on Central Europe and the Balkans. From 2012 to 2018 she traveled extensively in Ukraine interviewing Ukrainian intellectuals for Radio Liberty. She lives in Moscow.