Stoke Newington Literary Festival

  • Home
  • Our venues
  • Blog
  • About
  • Sign up
  • Speakers
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Share
Stoke Newington Literary Festival

Olia Hercules

Olia Hercules
Olia Hercules was born in the south of Ukraine in 1984. She left her home town Kakhovka at the age of twelve, when she moved to Cyprus.

After finishing school, she moved to the UK where she studied Italian language and International Relations at the University of Warwick. After spending a year in Italy, Olia settled in London, pursuing a journalistic career after completing her Master’s degree.

Following the financial crisis of 2008, Olia decided to quit her job as a film business reporter to pursue her dream to cook for a living.

She trained at the renowned Leiths School of Food and Wine and then worked as a chef de partie in restaurants, including Ottolenghi, and as a recipe developer before landing a book deal for Mamushka, a cookbook that celebrates her family recipes, from Ukraine and Moldova to Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan. Mamushka has won the prestigious Fortnum and Mason Award for best debut cookbook 2016.It has been translated into five languages, and to date has sold over 100,000 copies worldwide. Olia was named the Observer Rising Star of 2015.

Her second cookbook is called Kaukasis: a culinary journey through Georgia, Azerbaijan and beyond. It was published on August 10th in the UK and Australia and in October 2017 in the US, Canada, Germany and Poland.

She is currently working on her third cookbook, Summer Kitchen, with Bloomsbury. It will be published in spring 2020.

Olia lives in London with her son Sasha and husband Joe, writing, cooking and feeding her unceasing curiosity by researching food culture and culinary traditions of countries less explored.

  • Our other speakers: 
  • Amir Dotan
  • Lauren Laverne
  • Jessica Martin
  • Xanthi Barker
  • Neil Denny
  • Mariam Khan
  • Alissa Timoshkina
  • Travis Elborourgh
  • Nikesh Shukla
  • Nick Thorpe
  • Kiare Ladner
  • Lara Maiklem
  • Niki Segnit
  • Sheila Dillon
  • Michael Goldfarb
  • Caroline Bobby
  • Thurston Moore
  • Isobel Galleymore
  • Nicola Kent
  • Sophie Parkin
  • Briony Bax
  • Ken Worpole
  • Tom Huddleston
  • Melanie McGrath
  • Will Wiles
  • Shiromi Pinto
  • Niall McDevitt
  • Natasha Carthew
  • Joe Kerr
  • Jean McNeil
  • Golnoosh Nour
  • Crystal Mahey-Morgan
  • Sophie Naufal
  • Claire Armitstead
  • Dina Nayeri
  • Nigella Lawson
  • Sophie Parkin
  • Rachel McCormack
  • Jenny Linford
  • Julia Bueno
  • Olia Hercules
  • Fernando Sdrigotti
  • Michael Bravo
  • Paul Scraton
  • Daniel Trilling
  • Johny Pitts
  • Joel Golby
  • Magdalene Forés
  • Sue Quinn
  • Alice Lascelles
  • Alex Clark
  • Michele Kirsch
  • Ed Miliband
  • Zia Ahmed
  • Karen Liebenguth
  • Zawe Ashton
  • Jan Noble
  • Torcuil Crichton
  • Julius Beltrame
  • Jude Rogers
  • Bruno Vincent
  • Saima Mir
  • Dorian Lynsky
  • Jeremy Reed
  • Yasmin Khan
  • Anita Sethi
  • Suzanne Noble
  • Catherine Steadman
  • Suzi Feay
  • Debora Robertson
  • Coco Khan
  • Tim Wells
  • Ana Seferović
  • Pete Brown
  • Louie Stowell
  • Henny Beaumont
  • John Hegley
  • Valerie Brandes
  • Roger Robinson
  • Sali Hughes
  • Wendy Jones
  • Mazin Saleem
  • Alan Johnson
  • Rosie Price
  • Sav Akyuz
  • Andy Miller
  • Richard Boon
  • Kostya Tsolákis
  • Kerry Hudson
  • Caroline Rosie Dent
  • Lynn Enright
  • Robert Montgomery
  • Joe Haddow
  • Diana Henry
  • Elizabeth Macneal
  • Kirsten Norrie
  • Ken Worpole
  • Ashley Hickson-Lovence
  • Joel Morris & Jason Hazeley
  • Eloise Millar
  • Robyn Travis
  • Jo Neary
  • Natasha Carthew
  • Felicity Cloake
  • John Osborne
  • Geoff Nicholson
  • Anthony Cartwright
  • Dan O’Brien
  • Francesca Segal
  • Stephen Morris
  • Paul Burston
  • Kit Caless
  • Lee Jackson
  • Nadia Valman
  • Sean Longden
  • Serena Constance
  • Patrice Lawrence
  • Greta Bellamacina
  • Alex Jackson
  • Jody Porter
  • Georgina Pringle
  • Ben Moor
  • Nadia Shireen
  • Ryann Donnelly
  • Francesca Cassini
  • Anna Birch
  • Gareth E. Rees
  • Jamie Lee
  • Emanuelle Dirix
  • Martin Rowson
  • Home
  • Our venues
  • Blog
  • About
  • Sign up
  • Speakers
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Share

© 2022 Stoke Newington Literary Festival. Stoke Newington Literary Festival C.I.C. is a company limited by guarantee.
Registered in England & Wales number 7990786. Registered Office: 52 Bayston Road, London N16 7LT.
Site by Zerofee. All festival photos©: www.davidxgreen.com. Ticket icon designed by Mateo Zlatar from the Noun Project