Chris Conrady asked Katherine Arden:

Coincidentally, right after enjoying The Bear and the Nightingale, I read The Stranger in the Woods, by Michael Finkel, a true investigative story about a hermit living in solitude for 26 years in the Main woods. Much of the imagery and descriptions of the of isolation seemed to dovetail well with Vasya's life. It made me curious, who were the actual people or places that you drew upon when crafting this series?

Katherine Arden Well, as a student, I studied in Moscow for a year when I was 19, then again for about nine months when I was 22. So I had a bit of a Russian background to draw on, and I personally love the outdoors, so I had a sense of weather, and sky and snow and that sort of thing, and I think that helped me in a lot of instances.

The rest of creating BEAR was just writing and rewriting, trying to get it right. The only character who is drawn from someone I knew is Vasilisa herself, although Konstantin owes a lot of his personality to Saint John Rivers from Jane Eyre (one of my personally most hated characters in literature) and Frollo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame (the novel, I am not a huge fan of Disney's take)

I tried to recreate the atmosphere of Russia as I knew it, informed by research about the 14th century. I did my best. I am so glad you enjoyed!

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