Stepan Pisakhov was born in 1879 in the city of Arkhangelsk. At the age of 22, he went to St. Petersburg and attended the Art School of Baron Alexander von Stieglitz as a non-matriculated student. There he practiced painting for several years under the tenure of Academician Alexander Novoskoltsev. In 1905, Stepan Pisakhov was expelled from School for his speeches against the monarchy. He was forbidden to enter other Russian institutions, and he was short of funds to study abroad. Therefore, Pisakhov left St. Petersburg, travelled to the Arctic, and then went abroad. He visited Turkey, Syria, and France, and everywhere he painted pictures and trained as a painter. In addition, Pisakhov investigated the everyday life of the northern people’s — the Pomor and the Saami. His fairy tales were later based on this information.

 
Stepan Pisakhov published his first works in 1918. Initially he wrote essays, and in 1924, he published his first fairy tale ‘If You Don’t Like It, Don’t Listen’. By that time, the writer carefully maintained the look of a narrator of folk tales: he had a long beard, wore old-fashioned clothes, and used vernacular words and dialecticisms in his speech.