Vladimir Aleksandrovich Lifshits (1913-1978) was born in the city of Kharkov and spent his youth in Leningrad, where his family moved in 1926. In 1933 he graduated from the insitute of finance and economics at Leningrad State University; however, it was in the field of literature that he made his name as a Soviet poet and playwright. He wrote his first poems in the mid 1930s and published his first collection of verse enitled Dolina in 1936. He served as an officer during World War II, primarily in an infantry battalion on the Leningrad front, and was wounded in battle in September of 1944. In the late 1940s, fearing arrest because of the "struggle with cosmopolitanism" campaign, he moved with his second wife, Irina Kichanova, from Leningrad to Moscow. Eventually he settled in a Litfond (Literary Fund) apartment located near the Aeroport metro station, where he had such neighbors as Viktor Shklovsky and other literary figures. Although he wrote prose, satirical verse, plays, and song lyrics, he is known primarily for his books of children's poetry. He died in Moscow and was buried in Peredelkino. Asya Mikhailovna Genkina (1908-1999), the first wife of Vladimir Lifshits, was also a writer, who published children's books such as Moi Tovarishchi (1943) and Nash Dom (1946) and contributed pieces to such journals as Koster. She remarried, and after the death of her second husband, Ilia Veniaminovich Meizerov, she immigrated to the U.S. in 1977. Asya died in 1999 and is buried in Lebanon, New Hampshire

Lev Lifshits, the son of Vladimir and Asya, was born in Leningrad in 1937. In 1941 he and his mother were evacuated and spent most of the war in Omsk, returning to Leningrad in July of 1944. In 1954 he enrolled in the school of journalism of the Philological Faculty at Leningrad State University. He married fellow student Nina Mokhova in April of 1959, and after graduating that same year, went to the island of Sakhalin to work on a newspaper there. Upon returning to Leningrad, he began work as an editor for the children's periodical Koster and started his own literary career by writing poetry and plays for children. At this time he changed his name to Lev Loseff to avoid confusion with his father.

In 1976 Lev Loseff, his wife, and their two children, Dimitry and Maria, immigrated to the United States. He enrolled at the U. of Michigan as a Ph.D. candidate, while working as an editor at Ardis publishing. At this time he also began publishing poetry in Russian emigre journals such as Ekho, Kontinent, and Russkaia Mysl. In 1979, after defending his doctoral dissertation, he accepted a position in the Russian department at Dartmouth College. Over the next 25 plus years until his death in 2009, Lev Loseff published steadily. His poetry found success in both Russia and the United States, and his scholarly work and critical studies are highly regarded. With regard to the latter, Loseff has written extensively on his long-time friend and Nobel laureate, Joseph Brodsky, culminating in the book, Joseph Brodsky: a Literary Life.