Ruth Daniloff was born in Norfolk, England in 1935 and was educated in England and Scotland. Now based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she lived and worked in Moscow, Russia, during the 1980s, where she was a correspondent for Peace News and Variety. Her overseas journalistic career was largely based in Russia, and she has written for The Washington Post, Smithsonian Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and many other publications.