Novella Nikolaevna Matveeva (rus.: Новелла Матвеева) was born in Pushkin (Tsarskoye Selo) in 1934. She is a Soviet and Russian singer, songwriter, poetess and playwright. Her poetry began to be published in the late 1950's, which is also when she first began singing her poems to her own guitar accompaniment. Her first record, which was also the first record in the author's song genre published in the USSR, came out in 1966.

Matveeva has set to music and performs her own poetry, as well as that of her late husband, Ivan Kiuru (1934-1992). With her thin, childlike voice and imaginative lyrical writing, Matveeva often sings songs which initially seem to be for children, but combine their innocence with wistful sadness, examples being songs like «Страна Дельфиния» ("Dolphin-land") and «Пожарный» ("The Fireman"). Her best known song, «Девушка из харчевни» ("Girl from the Inn") was written in 1962 and has been covered by many artists, including Veronika Dolina and Zahar May.

Novella Matveeva currently resides and works in Moscow. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.