Sophia Parnok is Russia's only openly lesbian poet, sister of poet Valentin Parnakh and children's author Yelizaveta Tarakhovskaya. At the beginning of World War I, she met the young poet Marina Tsvetaeva, with whom she became involved in a passionate love affair that left important traces in the poetry of both women. Parnok’s belated first book of verse, Poems, appeared shortly before she and Tsvetaeva broke up in 1916. The lyrics in Poems presented the first, non-decadent, lesbian-desiring subject ever to be heard in a book of Russian poetry. Parnok and her new lover, Lyudmila Erarskaya, an actress, left Moscow in late summer 1917 and spent the Civil War years in the Crimean town of Sudak. There she wrote one of her masterpieces, the dramatic poem and libretto for Alexander Spendiarov's 4-act opera Anast. Shortly after the appearance of The Vine, she met Olga Tsuberbiller, a mathematician at Moscow University, with whom Parnok lived in a permanent relationship from 1925 until her death in 1933. In late 1931, she met Nina Vedeneyeva, a physicist. The two middle-aged women fell impossibly in love, and their affair inspired Parnok's greatest lesbian work, the cycles Ursa Major and Useless Goods.
Vedeneeva was with her when Parnok died in 1933, at the age of 48.
News of Parnok's death was posted at the Moscow Writers' Club only the morning of the funeral; many mourners nevertheless appeared, including such prominent figures as Boris Pasternak. From Paris another leading poet, Vladislav Khodasevich, issued a statement praising Parnok's "distinctive voice." But she was soon forgotten by all but those closest to her. She was buried in Olga Tsuberbiller's family plot. After Parnok's death, the women who had shared her life - Erarskaya, Tsuberbiller, Vedeneeva - met often to remember her.