Russian poet and writer.  Shefner was born in St. Petersburg in 1915.  His first poems appeared in print in 1936.  During World War II Shefner served in Leningrad, as a soldier and later as a war correspondent.  From the 1940s to the 1970s Shefner came out with several books of poetry and prose.  He died in 2002 in St. Petersburg.