Fanis Gataullovich Yarullin

Fanis Gataullovich Yarullin was a Tatar poet, prose writer, and playwright. He was born on February 9, 1938, in the village of Kyzyl Yar in the Bavlinsky District of Tatarstan. His mother raised six children on her own, since Fanis's father, Yarullin Gataulla, died at the front in 1942.

In 1954, after finishing the eighth grade, the sixteen-year-old Fanis moved to the district center in search of work. He took a job as a fitter at the communications office of the Tatneft association and soon became a highly skilled specialist. Military service in 1957 brought him to an aviation school for airborne gunners-radio operators. He also joined a sports club, where he began training in track and field. He achieved excellent results in this area. However, during exercises Fanis had an unfortunate fall onto his back and became bedridden for life. It was then that he tried his hand at poetry for the first time.

While in the hospital, Fanis completed secondary school, and later, from 1964 to 1970, he studied part-time at Kazan State University. His first collection of poems, 'Min tormyshka gashyk' ('I am in love with life'), was published in 1964. In the same year he took second place in the All-Union contest of Komsomolskaya Pravda, and his poems were included in the collection 'The Pink Deer'. He later received numerous awards: the Musa Jalil Republican Prize (1978), the State Prize of the Republic of Tatarstan named after Gabdulla Tukay (1995), the title of People's Poet of the Republic of Tatarstan (2001), among others. Fanis Yarullin is the author of 46 books. The poet died on December 9, 2011, after a long illness.