Valery Panyushkin was born in 1969 in Leningrad. He has worked as a special correspondent for the newspapers Kommersant and Vedomosti. He wrote a regular column in Gazeta.ru, and earned the title of "Golden Pen" for his journalism. He is the author of the books Mikhail Khodorovsky: A Prisoner of Silence, Gazprom: The New Russian Weapon, and Something Unnoticeable. He lives in Moscow and currently works as a correspondent for Snob magazine.